Tag Ridings handed the TPC Colorado Championship to his wife, Brenda, and she could barely hold the weighty hardware.
She carried Ridings’ golf bag as his caddy all week, while Ridings carried the burden of a 19-year winless drought.
But he sure lived up to the weight of the moment on Sunday.
Ridings drained a tying par putt on the tournament’s 72nd hole, holed a gutsy 20-foot birdie on the first playoff hole and sank a 2-foot par putt on the second playoff hole to win the 2021 TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes.
“I haven’t had anything bigger than that in a long time,” the 46-year-old Oklahoma native said with his measured drawl. “I’ve had some chances on tour, but this one felt bigger, just with the timing and the way my last few seasons have gone. So this was huge.”
Ridings shot a final-round, 4-under 68 after starting the day two shots back, highlighted by four birdies in a row on the front nine.
He held pat down the stretch as others wilted, ultimately sneaking into the playoff with Kevin Yu and surging Englishman David Skinns, who fired a 7-under 65 on Sunday.
It was Ridings’ first win on any professional tour since a Web.com (now Korn Ferry Tour) win at the Permian Basin Open in August 2002.
“It’s probably the biggest thing I’ve accomplished, coming back from such a huge hole in my game,” Ridings said. “It’s just been a stretch of hanging in there and, frankly, trying to pay the house bills.”
Ridings finished a healthy 91st on the 2005 PGA Tour money list, one year after finishing a career-best T-2nd in the Michelin Championship at Las Vegas.
But Ridings has mostly played at the Korn Ferry level for the last 15 years and entered the tournament at No. 1406 in the World Golf Rankings. For some perspective, the first two TPC Colorado champions were both in the top 300.
Just how long has it been since Ridings won?
Yu, who shot a final-round 66, was born one year after Ridings turned pro in 1997.
A whopping 6,895 days had passed since his lone victory on any tour.
Remember Brenda? He didn’t even meet her until 6 months after that summer 2002 triumph.
“I didn’t have a girlfriend much less a wife, we hadn’t met yet,” Ridings quipped on the 18th green after the trophy presentation.
Korn Ferry Tour officials could barely even find highlights from the 2002 win, which he also won in … a playoff. In that victory, he eagled the playoff opener, holing out from the fairway to end the tournament.
This one didn’t have such a sudden ending, but it was no less dramatic.
It really started on the par-4 18th hole, as Yu missed a 6-foot par putt that would have given him the win outright.
Playing in the final group behind Yu, Ridings needed a par on 18 but had to lay up after an errant tee shot. His pitch onto the green landed hole-high and checked up six feet behind the pin, leaving him a putt for a playoff.
“I had a dead-straight putt,” Ridings said, “And it went right in the middle.”
The two playoff holes were each on No. 16, a par 3 that shoots directly away from the TPC Colorado clubhouse toward the lake.
Skinns’ wedge stopped 30 feet short at the green’s edge, but he drilled the winding putt to ensure he’d stay alive. Ridings followed moments later from a bit closer, with the ball dying in the hole as he let out a massive fist pump.
“There’s no way I make that putt on the first hole of the playoff if David hadn’t already made his, because I had been lagging it all day on those curving putts,” Ridings said. “
“I can’t wait to see the replay, because my eyes were closed like a shark when it went in.”
Yu followed with a close-range chip from the back fringe that just skirted the lip, knocking him out of the playoff.
Ridings and Skinns headed back up the hill to play No. 16 again. Skinns deposited his tee shot into a front bunker, while Ridings’ approach settled near where he sank the putt from minutes earlier.
Skinns’ bunker shot blasted about 15 feet by the hole, while Ridings lagged his putt close. The par effort from Skinns did a near-360 lip-out around the hole before staying out, to his great dismay.
“I didn’t watch it, I just saw his face afterward,” Ridings said. “I thought it was going in and looked away and just saw him in disbelief.”
All Ridings had to do was tap his 2-footer in, a formality after the clutch putts that got him there and ultimately back into the winner’s circle.
It prompted a lengthy, tearful hug with Brenda, who was caddying for him for just the third time ever. It was a “change of pace” for Ridings, who doesn’t have a regular caddy.
“He was just comfortable the whole time, the whole week,” Brenda said. “He stayed level-headed, even in that playoff.”
Taking off: Taylor Moore proving a contender for 2021 TPC Colorado Championship, PGA Tour card
Ridings was a surprise winner by almost any metric. He wasn’t a young breakthrough victor, like Nelson Ledesma and Will Zalatoris were in the TPC Colorado’s first two editions.
The TPC Colorado plays over 7,900 yards, an arduous hilly walk that also features some long carries for a moderate hitter like the 46-year-old Ridings.
The length didn’t stop Ridings, as he, Yu and Skinns set a new tournament record with 16-under scores of 272 to best Zalatoris’ and Ledesma’s winning marks by one.
But Tag Ridings is not the player the Korn Ferry Tour is marketing when they describe it as “The Path to the PGA Tour.”
No, he has already been there. And back. And seemingly everywhere on his journey through tour after tour, tournament after tournament.
“It is the greatest feeling, because I have stayed awake at night hoping to win a tournament while my kids were alive,” Ridings said, with his oldest child barely a teenager.
After the round, with the early-evening light glimmering off the lake behind him, Ridings slowly turned and took in the scene.
He was asked what made him stick it out through these past 19 years. After all, Ridings hadn’t even finished in the top 10 at a Korn Ferry Tour Tournament since 2018.
What kept him going, even as the results hadn’t been positive?
“I was not confident I could still do it,” Ridings acknowledged. “Four days in a row is not as easy as it once was.
“But I was never a blue-chipper, never a top-end player at any level. I’ve never had to calm down and think, ‘I got this in the bag.’
“I just had the gall to think I could make it.”
Chris Abshire is the sports and stats content coach at the Coloradoan. Contact him at ChrisAbshire@coloradoan.com.
