FORT WORTH, Texas — Davis Riley was practicing a week before Colonial when he got a disturbing call that his sister had had a seizure at work, leading to the discovery of a tumor in her brain that would lead to surgery the next day.
At the time, Riley wasn’t sure if he could compete in the Charles Schwab Challenge, or even if he wanted to.
“When you have someone that close to you, your thoughts go through all the worst-case scenarios,” Riley said. “The thought of potentially losing my sister was definitely a scary feeling.”
When the surgery was successful and the tumor was found to be non-cancerous, the family breathed a huge sigh of relief. The parents told their son that his sister wanted to go and play.
Riley did just that, playing with Scott Scheffler in the final group on Sunday to win his first individual PGA Tour victory.
Riley finished with an even-par 70 to finish at 14-under 266, five strokes behind world number one Keegan Bradley.
Riley started the final round four strokes behind but hit his driver into the right rough on the second hole, then into a bunker for a bogey that cost him a stroke.
But with winds gusting more than 20 mph all day and hard greens, Scheffler, or anyone else, couldn’t have gotten any closer.
Bradley shot 67, while Scheffler shot 71 despite not getting a birdie until the 13th hole.
Collin Morikawa, the only player to finish all four rounds under par, shot a final round 68 to finish in fourth place at eight under par.
The 27-year-old Riley’s lone PGA Tour victory came last year when he won the team event at the Zurich Classic in New Orleans with Nick Hardy.
For his victory at the historic Colonial, which has been fully restored since last year’s tournament, the Mississippi native earned $1.638 million in prize money, the traditional winner’s plaid jacket and a fully restored and modernized 1975 Stingray car.
Riley’s parents were still with his sister and couldn’t be there to witness his win.
But Hardy, who teed off five hours before the final group, was there to greet him after he made the final 6-foot par putt.
“We have a special friendship and obviously playing on the PGA Tour together for the first time was special,” Riley said. “We played the first two days together this week so there’s definitely a comfort level there and I think that’s a big reason why I’m off to such a good start.”
The final round was played on the same day that Grayson Murray’s parents announced that their 30-year-old son committed suicide on Saturday, after the two-time tour winner withdrew from the tournament with two holes remaining in the second round, citing illness.
His family had urged PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan to allow play to continue.
“It’s a very sad day for the golf world and my heart goes out to him and his family,” Riley said. “He definitely needed to play a little bit extra today.
“It’s a sad day. My heart breaks for his family.”
Bradley made a 4-foot birdie on the 17th hole to get to 10 under, but missed a chance to save par by a similar distance on the 18th hole when both his tee shot and approach shot landed in the right rough.
“It was probably my best round of the year. I just hung in there,” Bradley said. “It’s a real relief to be in the running to win, which isn’t always the case.”
Colonial was his first top 10 finish since a three-way playoff at the Sony Open in January, which Murray won.
Riley drilled a 27-foot birdie on the 229-yard par-3 fourth hole, located in the middle of the famed “Horrible Horseshoe,” still known as the course’s most difficult three holes.
Scheffler bogeyed there and then again on the fifth hole, when he landed his ball in the right rough that runs parallel to the Trinity River.
“Obviously it was nice to start off with a comfortable lead,” Riley said. “It’s never easy when you’re leading with any shot when you have the No. 1 ranked player in the world coming up behind you. … I just went in today as if we started out even and I just wanted to win.”
By the time Riley made a 9-foot birdie putt to finish the first nine holes, he was six strokes ahead of Scheffler.
“I wanted to put pressure on Davis early in the round, but it didn’t go as I wanted,” Scheffler said. “He bogeyed the second, then he came right back with a birdie on the fourth and didn’t give us many chances today. … It was a well-earned win for him.”
A week after his arrest, Scheffler was playing near his Dallas home in the dark of the early morning hours before the second round of the PGA Championship when police, investigating a pedestrian fatality, arrested him and briefly jailed him for failure to obey a traffic command.
After finishing tied for eighth at Valhalla, Colonial was Scheffler’s 11th top-10 finish in 12 tournaments this year. After consecutive wins at the Masters and the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head, he took three weeks off before the PGA Championship to give birth to his first child.
For Scheffler, it was his third consecutive top-three finish at Colonial despite an opening score of 72, the first time he failed to break par in the first round this season.
That included his first triple bogey of the season on the par-3 13th hole, when his tee shot landed in the water in front of the elevated green.
The 13th hole was Scheffler’s first birdie of Sunday, but he was still seven strokes behind. After Thursday’s triple, he had gone 44 straight holes without a bogey until the fourth and fifth holes on Sunday, including rounds of 65 and 63.
