A game of inches, it doesn’t take much to win big or lose dramatically on the PGA Tour. The best of the best are out there teeing it up on a weekly basis, and you have to find any edge possible to emerge victorious.
Hideki Matsuyama, now a 10-time PGA Tour winner after a FedEx St. Jude come-from-behind victory on Suday, knows this. As does veteran caddie Jim “Bones Mackay,” who told a fun anecdote about just how tuned in Matsuyama can get on the course.
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“A few years ago at the BMW Championship, Bones was commentating for NBC and made a great call that one particular putt was breaking much more than Hideki had originally thought.
“The next day Hideki saw the clip on TV and sent someone from his team to find Bones. He wanted to talk to him about what he saw in the putt and how he figured it out. Anything for the extra edge. So sick.”
This is most assuredly the norm for tour pros who each have to find the smallest advantages at some of the toughest courses in the world, but it’s fascinating to see just how far Matsuyama and his team will go.
Just this past weekend at TPC Southwind, Matsuyama needed two birdie putts on his final two holes to hold off Viktor Hovland and Xander Schauffele. We don’t know if Matsuyama spoke to a groundskeeper, a random who played a member-guest half a decade ago or went back to “Bones” before his round, but we certainly wouldn’t put it past him.
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