It was pretty cool to see the Wells Fargo Championship turn a vibrant shade of Clemson orange Sunday evening, as two former Tiger teammates and close friends fought their way into a sudden-death playoff – and then found themselves facing each other.
Lucas Glover and Jonathan Byrd played college golf together for three years at Clemson. Before that, they had played junior golf against each other in South Carolina. But while they have played hundreds of rounds together, they had never battled in a PGA Tour playoff until Sunday.
The bearded Glover won with a four-foot par putt on the one extra hole they played, No.18 at Quail Hollow Club, shaking his left fist at the sky as the ball found the cup.
Byrd had made a dramatic birdie at the same hole 20 minutes before to force the playoff – a birdie Glover had correctly predicted in an interview during the CBS telecast.
When Byrd dropped the 14-foot putt to a thunderous roar from the sellout crowd to force overtime, Glover said simply: "Told ya."
But Glover – who had not won a tournament since the 2009 U.S. Open – stayed tranquil. He gave Byrd a hug shortly before the playoff. Then he striped his drive down the center of the fairway, while Byrd hit his into a fairway bunker and never could recover. Glover parred the lone playoff hole, Byrd bogeyed it and that was that.
Glover won $1.17 million for his victory -- his first since the 2009 U.S. Open. Byrd got $702,000 for second place. So that's a whole lot of green for both of them -- and a whole lot for the folks clad in orange to be proud about.
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