Desert Classic Recap: Relative Unknown Beats Mickelson

It is impossible to overstate how improbable unknown Adam Long's win at the Desert Classic on Sunday really was. Here's his story:

Long is 31 years old and had spent the past seven years toiling around not only the Web.com Tour but also the Latinoamerica and Mackenzie tours. He never won on any of them.

He had played only five previous PGA Tour events. One of them was eight years ago (a missed cut at the 2011 U.S. Open). The other four came this season, with only one made cut. He stood a collective 20-over-par for his career.

Long missed the cut in all four Web.com Tour playoff events at the end of last season. So, combined with his start on the PGA Tour season, he had missed seven of his past eight cuts heading to La Quinta.

Long was ranked 20th of the 21 PGA Tour rookies this season. That's what happens when you accrue all of 4 FedEx Cup points. Four.

The New Orleans native by way of Duke arrived in the California desert ranked 417th in the world. We need to say here that Long did play well enough last season on the Web Tour to get into this position, to get his PGA Tour card, finishing 13th in earnings during the regular season.

He shot 63-71-63, 19-under, over the first three days to find himself, of all places, in the final grouping alongside none other than Phil Mickelson, and Adam Hadwin. No pressure there.

Fast forward to the 18th hole on the Stadium Course at PGA West, where all three were tied for the lead. One of them would win the tournament. Hadwin found the fairway, the other two the right rough. Long was in a particularly difficult spot (and we're talking other than that the fact that he was Adam Long). He was 175 yards away, the ball a foot below his feet and he had to avoid water on the left. He hit a miracle shot inside of 14 feet and, after Mickelson and Hadwin both missed, he amazingly made the birdie putt. The Golf Channel cameras caught Mickelson saying to his caddie: "Wow."

Wow indeed.

To say this was a life-changing moment is almost an understatement. The last time a golfer ranked lower than 417th won is not that long ago. Michael Kim was No. 473 at the John Deere last year. But Kim was far more accomplished, in his third full season on Tour.

A better comparison would be Derek Ernst winning the Wells Fargo in 2013. Ernst was outside the top-1,200 in the world at the time. Not only has Ernst never won again, he's never even finished better than a tie for 17th. He still toils on the Web with occasional PGA starts. It's safe to say that Ernst was a one-hit wonder.

Long now moves to 133rd in the world, ahead of such veterans as Jhonattan Vegas, Scott Piercy and Nick Watney. He's secure on Tour through the 2020-21 season, essentially three full years. This for a player who on Sunday morning wasn't sure when and where he'd play again.

In the aftermath of one stunning Sunday, Long was asked how "Adam Long, PGA Tour winner" sounds. He replied, "Crazy."

Yep, that's as good of a word as any.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Phil Mickelson
Oh, Phil. In his first start since The Match against Tiger Woods, Mickelson showed no rust, opening with a 60 and staying in or near the lead throughout. He putted terribly on Sunday yet barely missed a 40-footer at 18 on Sunday that could've led to a playoff with Long (or might've spooked Long into missing, thereby giving Mickelson the title). It was a weak field, and Mickelson won't contend every week, or even often. But he showed he still has strong fantasy value, and we feel more confident in that than we did five days ago.

Adam Hadwin
Maybe even more than Mickelson, Hadwin let this one get away, as he had a three-shot lead on the back nine. He has only one career win, two years ago at the Valspar. Hadwin has now finished top-six at the Desert Classic four years running, with two runners-up. He has three top-10s already this season to match all of last season, when his game slumped. Hadwin is good enough to be a top-50 player, and a win would've gotten him there. Instead, he's now 57th. Hadwin's biggest cashes have been front-loaded the past few years, so jump on him over the next couple of months before taking a step back to see whether he takes a step back.

Daniel Berger
The former top-20 golfer endured a tough 2017-18, as he was slowed by a wrist injury. It was a bad year for Berger, but many golfers would've gladly accepted nine top-25s and a 70th-place standing in the points race. Berger shut down after withdrawing from the BMW in early September. Following four months off, we didn't expect much, but we were wrong. Simply making the cut would've been a huge success, but Berger shot four rounds in the 60s and tied for 12th. Impressive.

Talor Gooch, Dominic Bozzelli, J.T. Poston, Vaughn Taylor, Sean O'Hair, Michael Thompson
These six guys all finished in the top-10. It surely is a great moment for each of them. But before trying to pick them up in your season-long league or considering starting them next week in DFS, keep this in mind: They may not get another top-10 all season. Last season, the six of them combined for seven top-10s – three by Taylor, two each by Poston and O'Hair. Gooch, Bozzelli and Thompson had none. Of course, there's no way to predict what the rest of the season holds for all of them. The point we're trying to make is that the majority of golfers use maybe a few good weeks all season to win the bulk of their money. And it's virtually impossible to predict when that will happen. You know how they say you can't time the stock market? You can't time when these guys, who finished top-10 in a very weak field, will do it again.

Danny Willett
Willett plummeted from a top-10 golfer after winning the 2016 Masters to outside the top-450. Injuries and personal issues sidetracked his game. But he inched back, then surprisingly won the European Tour season-ender in Dubai back in November to carry him inside the top-100. The Englishman is now committed to playing more on the PGA Tour. He began by missing the cut at the Desert Classic. It wasn't a good fit, but he probably used it as a tuneup for next week at Torrey Pines. Willett will be interesting to watch. He won't return to the top-10 OWGR, but the top-50 or better surely is not out of the question.

Russell Henley
Cracks started to show in Henley's game last season, when he missed almost one-third of his cuts and cleared well under $2 million. He barely finished inside the top-100 in the point standings. Henley missed the cut at the Desert Classic, giving him four trunk-slams in six starts in 2018-19. He is still only 29, clearly time to reverse this downward trend. But for now, the signs don't offer much good news for Henley.

Bill Haas
Haas just missed fulfilling terms of his medical extension back at the Sanderson Farms, and that didn't bode well for him. He was going to have to struggle getting into fields, but he got into the Desert Classic, a tournament he'd won and at which he'd always done well. Not this time. Haas missed the cut, further illustrating his near nonexistent fantasy options for this season.

Shane Lowry
Lowry had really been living off one huge win, the 2015 WGC-Bridgestone that carried him into the top-20 in the world rankings. (He also was runner-up at the 2016 U.S. Open.) But since then he has slowly dropped, first outside the top-50 and then spent most of last year in the 80s. Now, Lowry has won again, beating a pretty good field in the first European Tour event of the year. It will carry the Irishman, still only 31 years old, to No. 41 in the world. Lowry is probably going to be in all the big tournaments and, in the ones where he can thrive on his stout tee-to-green game and putting is deemphasized a bit, he certainly could be a component on deeper season-long rosters or in DFS lineups.

Louis Oosthuizen
The South African is now 36, and he hadn't really contended on the PGA Tour, or anywhere, since finishing co-runner-up at the 2017 PGA Championship. Back issues are always in play for Oosthuizen. But he notched his first worldwide win in almost three years at the South African Open last month. It wasn't a great field by any means. Last week, Oosthuizen finished fourth to Lowry, giving him four top-fives in his past six starts going back to the CIMB. Oosthuizen has always done enough to fall no further than the 30s in the OWGR, and now he's back in the top-25 again. It's always a challenge to forecast when he'll do well and when his back will derail him. But Oosthuizen is showing he still has some real upside.

Smylie Kaufman
Kaufman played so poorly last season he became a bit of a social-media punching bag. It turns out his elbow was hurt, and now he's under a major medical extension. Kaufman has five events to earn 303 FedEx Cup points, or play under past champions status. (How many is 303? In most events, a winner gets 500 points, fifth place takes home 110 and 10th gets 75.) Kaufman smartly did an end run around his limited opportunities, heading to the Singapore Open to get in some rounds. Two, to be precise, Kaufman missed the cut in a very weak field. Still, it was a good move by him. Still, he's not a viable fantasy option, at least not yet.