Happy April, ladies and gentlemen! Here’s hoping your co-workers didn’t put your stapler in jello or slide a whoopie cushion on your chair. Let’s talk some golf.

Match made in Texas

One year after getting dusted in the championship match of this event, Kevin Kisner emerged as the champion of the 2019 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. Kisner beat Matt Kuchar 3&2 in the final match to capture his third career PGA Tour victory. Kiz birdied the first hole and never trailed. WGC Dell Technologies Match Play Leaderboard

Notes

  • Kisner’s victory was not only impressive but also quite surprising. He lost his first match of the week, and that usually leads to doom in this event. According to Justin Ray, only 12.5% of players have advanced out of pool play after losing their first match.

  • Kisner has now reached the championship match of this event each of the last two years and is 10-2-1 over that span.

  • Francesco Molinari defeated Lucas Bjerregaard 4&2 in the consolation match to finish in third place. Franky lost to Kiz on the 18th green in the semifinals, but his overall performance this weekend was impressive.

  • Matt Kuchar and Sergio Garcia found themselves in more controversy this weekend. Watch and read all about the putt that Kuchar claims he did not have a chance to give to Sergio.

  • Tiger was defeated by Lucas Bjerregaard late on Saturday after beating Rory McIlroy Saturday morning. It wasn’t the outcome he was looking for, but Tiger looked strong in his final tune-up before the Masters, where he will vie for his fifth green jacket.

Graham cracks through

The Corales Puntacana Club and Resort Championship ended on Sunday with Graeme McDowell holding the trophy. McDowell shot a pair of 64s on Friday and Saturday on his way to a one-shot victory over Mackenzie Hughes and Chris Stroud. Corales Puntacana Club & Resort Leaderboard

Notes

  • McDowell has gone through some serious turmoil since his last win in 2015. He had just two top-10 finishes in the last 59 events and had fallen outside the top 250 in the Official World Golf Ranking. This win moves him back inside the top 150 and another step closer to qualifying for the Open Championship in his home country of Northern Ireland.

  • Canadian Mackenzie Hughes shot back-to-back 66s on the weekend to vault up the leaderboard. His T-2 this week is his best PGA Tour result since the 2017 RSM Classic.

  • Rookie Sungjae Im notched his eighth top-20 finish of the season with a T-7 showing.

  • Monday qualifier Chip McDaniel shot a final-round 63 to finish T-5.

The good kind of McCarthyism

Mackenzie Tour legend Dan McCarthy earned his first Web.com Tour title with a one-shot victory at the Savannah Golf Championship. McCarthy went wire-to-wire after opening with a 65 on Thursday. In 2016, McCarthy won four times on the Mackenzie Tour, but he had not broken through on the Web until now. Savannah Golf Championship Leaderboard

Notes

  • Scottie Scheffler, a former standout at the University of Texas, fell just one shot shy of McCarthy this weekend. The solo second is his best finish on the Web.com Tour and his third top 10 of the year.

  • Former college phenoms Brian Campbell (Illinois), Will Zalatoris (Wake Forest), and Rico Hoey (USC) all finished inside the top 12 in Savannah.

  • Shout-out to Marty Dou for making seven birdies on Sunday and still managing to shoot 73.

The most artificial show on turf

Scotland’s Stephen Gallacher squeaked out a one-shot win at the Hero Indian Open on Sunday. Gallacher started the day two back of Julian Suri, but three birdies over the final four holes sealed his first victory in over five years. Hero Indian Open Leaderboard

Notes

  • Gallacher will move to roughly 200th in the OWGR. The Scotsman reached the top 50 early in his career, but he had not won since the 2014 Omega Dubai Desert Classic.

  • After starting the day with a two-shot lead, Julian Suri made a quadruple bogey on the 14th hole. Suri reached the top 60 in the world after the 2018 PGA Championship but has slipped back outside of the top 100.

  • Spaniard Jorge Campillo registered his third top-3 finish in his last four events.

Quick Hooks

On the LPGA Tour this weekend, Nasa Hataoka won the Kia Classic by three shots. Danielle Kang, Inbee Park, Jin Young Ko, Azahara Munoz, and Sung Hyun Park all tied for second. Kia Classic Leaderboard

Kevin Dougherty made an eagle the hard way in Savannah this weekend. Watch his muddy magic!

Shotgun Start: Sergio-Kuchar beef, an essay on the Bjerregaard upset, and Westy taunts

We return from the weekend with a smorgasbord of golf news to assess. We go long on the WGC Match Play, which delivered the best day of golf so far this year. We start with a dramatic reading of an essay that appeared on TV on the unthinkable upset of Lucas Bjerregaard beating Tiger Woods. After having some fun with that, we get to Tiger’s actual play and Rory booting it against him. Then we get into Lee Westwood’s taunt of the American Ryder Cup operation, as well as the Tour attempting to cage the highlight of his ace because he endorses the wrong courier service. Then we give the Sergio-Kuchar concession drama a full reading. We examine how both are wrong and the reactions to the mess. We also discuss Brandel’s position that this Match Play event was not advancing the players who played the best golf, as well as the notion that success here means you should be on the team for the Cup events. We also quickly hit on Nick Faldo’s work, a source sending a nugget on some more Bryson match play antics at the Ryder Cup, and the “browning out” of Louis Oosthuizen’s shirt logo. We wrap with a Masters fact of the day and some Sunday scaries. Listen on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify