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Professional golf this time of the year is generally called the silly season, to which Andrew Novak’s contribution to the silliness was his identifying his victory with Lauren Coughlin in the Grant Thornton Invitational on Sunday as completing “the modern-day grand slam.”
But their two-stroke victory at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida, was no laughing matter given that the duo will split $1 million for the victory. The $500,000 Coughlin earned was the largest payday of her career.
“That’s the most I’ve made in a single tournament,” she said. “That’s pretty awesome. But I was just so excited to get the win, to be honest.”
The final round of this 54-hole event was a modified four-ball (each player tees off and then play their partner’s ball until it is holed). The winners posted a nine-under 63 that included five birdies in their last six holes to win by three.
Three teams tied for second – Jennifer Kupcho and Chris Gotterup, Charley Hull and Michael Brennan, and Nelly Korda and Denny McCarthy.
Coughlin, 33, is twice a winner on the LPGA, but her partner Novak has only a single PGA Tour victory, that in the Zurich Classic earlier this year, partnering with Ben Griffin in the two-man team event.
“Some are calling it the modern-day Grand Slam — Zurich, Grant Thornton,” Novak, 30, jokingly said on Saturday. “Obviously, thinking about my legacy a little bit tomorrow.”
The top of the leaderboard on Sunday was congested until the winners began their sprint to the finish line. Until then, they just hung in to give themselves a chance.
“It was a slow start,” Novak said, “but a lot of the birdie holes were later on. Maybe on the 13th hole I saw a scoreboard and it was super bunched up. We were just having a good time out there. Yesterday was probably the stressful part of this format, with it being alternate shot. We just had a good time all week.”
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Main Image: Sam Navarro
