Back in March, Austin Smotherman entered Sunday at the Cognizant Championship on the precipice of his dream. Holding the 54-hole lead in a PGA Tour event for the first time in his career, the then-31-year-old faced the most terrifying round of his career. He navigated PGA National well enough that Sunday, but finished T2 as Nico Echavarria claimed the title after Shane Lowry imploded. But after he tapped in to close out his day, Smotherman looked like a man who had just won.
Because he knew that was a necessary step to get to where he eventually wanted to go.
“This was kind of just my first really big pedestal,” Smotherman said that Sunday. “Kind of had a back door-ish top 5 in the Mexico Open at Vidanta a couple years ago, and never really had the same kind of moments coming down the stretch … This will be a week I always look back at.”
That got Smotherman into his first-career Signature Event at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He withdrew from Bay Hill with an injury but posted a T13 at the Players the next week. But the breakthrough never came, as the rest of Smotherman’s season was filled with missed cuts and mediocre finishes. He finished 80th in the FedEx Cup standings and missed the playoffs, but the feeling that he was close remained.
That led him to this week at the Bank of Utah Championship, his 100th career PGA Tour start, where everything finally clicked.
He opened with a 63 at Black Desert Resort and followed it up with a 62 to take the lead into the weekend. A Saturday 6-under 65 gave him his second-career 54-hole lead and another chance at the hardest thing in professional golf: closing out your first win.
“It would be just a lifelong dream come true,” Smotherman said on Saturday about the possibility of getting the job done.
But achieving your dreams is never an easy task. It’s a frightening prospect that can turn your legs to jelly and numb your hands. Being so close to the one thing you’ve always wanted, the thing you’ve worked your entire life to achieve, can be paralyzing.
Austin Smotherman knew what awaited him because he faced it in March at PGA National.
He started Sunday’s final round with a one-shot lead over Doug Ghim but quickly calmed his nerves with birdies at 1, 4 and 5 to stretch his lead. Smotherman then made seven straight pars before reality set in, and the final stretch to his dreams started to lengthen as the nerves tightened. He found the fairway on the par-4 13th but lost his second shot into the lip of a greenside bunker. His third shot went just 24 feet and landed in another greenside bunker. He eventually made double bogey, and his lead shrank from three to one.
But Smotherman knew there were gettable holes ahead. He bounced back with a birdie on the drivable par-4 14th and another on 16. A bogey at 17 shrunk his lead over Ghim to two, but once Smotherman found the fairway at the par-5 18th, he knew he had finally made it.
His second shot landed just short of the green, allowing him to two-putt for birdie to finish at 26 under and claim his first PGA Tour title. When Smotherman knocked in his final putt, he hugged his caddie and Ghim before embracing his wife on the green. Then, when Austin Smotherman was asked to put everything into words, the emotions started to flow—the emotions of a 10-year journey that saw him spend two years on PGA Tour Latinoamerica, two-plus on the Korn Ferry Tour and make 100 starts on the PGA Tour before finally becoming a champion.
“Oh my gosh,” a bleary-eyed Smotherman told Golf Channel’s Amy Rogers after his win. “Just hit it just good enough [today], hit it close early to take some pressure off. … Oh my gosh, we won on the PGA Tour. That’s insane.
“Gosh … we did it! Let’s go!” Smotherman yelled as his interview ended.
An hour later, with the trophy beside him, the PGA Tour’s newest champion looked back on the long road he traveled from SMU to the moment that occurred Sunday in Utah. He talked about the “learning curves” he faced at each level of professional golf and how this moment could lead to even more. But talk of the next 100 starts or a next title can wait. For Austin Smotherman, Sunday was all about how far he’d come, what he learned and how he finally turned long-shot golf dreams into reality.
“One hundred starts out here is an incredible number, just to have 100 starts,” Smotherman said. “But even more so, to play professional golf now for 10 years, travel the world, have the support I’ve had, it’s pretty unreal to lift a trophy at the highest level. It’s something we’ve dreamed about since I was a kid. Here we are.”
Ten years and a lot of professional scars later, Austin Smotherman finally reached his destination because he always believed he’d get there. Some dreams just take time.
