Luke List would rather have been elsewhere, at least until Sunday when he won the Korn Ferry Challenge on the Valley course at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
List, 35, would rather have been in Fort Worth, Texas, playing in the PGA Tour’s Charles Schwab Challenge, but his FedEx Cup ranking, 124th, was not good enough to get into the field.
Instead, he opted for the Korn Ferry Tour event, shot rounds of 66, 70, 65 and 67 to win by one stroke, his first victory since a 2012 Korn Ferry Tour win, in this his first Korn Ferry Tour start since 2015. He had gone 208 consecutive starts – 62 on the Korn Ferry Tour, 146 on the PGA Tour – without a win.
“It’s been a while since I’ve won,” List said, “and it’s been a couple of months since we’ve played competitive golf, so it feels great, first of all to get back playing competitively and then to win the first week. I’m really excited.”
The last time List played competitively was the first round of the Players Championship next door at the Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass. He was tied for 37th when the tournament was cancelled.
That was three months ago, yet List still was counting on momentum for help.
“The last time I was here was for the Players and I was playing pretty well,” he said. “I tried to just carry that [momentum] into the restart. Obviously, I would have loved to have been at Colonial, but I’m glad I was here this week. It was really a perfect storm to be here and I’m just excited for the rest of the year.”
List, who is in the field for the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage later this week, birdied three of the first four holes in the final round to erase a one-shot deficit to 54-hole leader Will Zalatoris and take a two-stroke lead.
He played the final 14 holes in even-par, including a two-putt par from 40 feet at the last hole to defeat Joseph Bramlett and Shad Tuten by a stroke.