Hideki Matsuyama has moved up to third place in the FedExCup points list after winning the St Jude Championship.
Matsuyama felt his victory slipping away, with the 10-time PGA Tour winner having endured a tricky back nine in his final round.
He was also disrupted at the St Jude Championship, with golf fans angry after an official approached Matsuyama on the 12th hole.
After stepping on a pitch mark off the green on the seventh hole, the 2021 Masters Champion ultimately wasn’t penalised.
Matsuyama recovered from a disastrous slip by making two birdies on the final two holes, winning the event by two shots.
Brad Faxon really likes what Hideki Matsuyama does when putting
He remarkably lifted the trophy without his caddie and his coach, who were forced to return to Japan after their passports were stolen in London before the tournament.
But Matsuyama did seek advice from putting coach Brad Faxon, who revealed on SiriusXM: “He had a five shot lead, leading the week in putting stats, incredible. I said, may I take a look at your putter, I have never seen that before? I’m a Scottie Cameron geek too. And he takes it out of the head cover, hands it to me, and I look down and I smile. And then honest to God, Hideki says ‘Can I have a putting lesson?’ And he says it to me in English.
“I looked at him, I started laughing. I said ‘Hideki, you’re leading by five. You’re putting first on the tour this week. I want a putting lesson from you.’ And I don’t know that he thought that was very funny. I thought it was funny. And then Bob Turner came up and said ‘he’s serious, he wants to know what you like about his putting,’ and I’m like boy is this a bad situation to be in here. Leading by five, and I’m like, how could I dare say anything? And I said what do I do?
“If you watch Hideki when he’s over the putt, and you get the close up, how that putter behind the ball before he starts his stroke is really never stagnant, right? It’s got that little bouncy… it’s almost like the putter head’s nervous, right? But I like that fidgetiness.
“I definitely didn’t want to say anything technical about the putting stroke, I didn’t want to say anything that might confuse him. And I told him that’s so much about what I like, I like the squareness of his setup.
“It was two simple things, but I said, I think the bouncing the putter, so many great putters have done that, and I don’t like static over the ball. And I said something about I like posture. I related a story from Ben Crenshaw when I was a rookie-ish on the Tour, about how I like the softness in the arms and the shoulders. And he looked at me and he said, ‘I don’t know if I can do that, but thank you so much,’ meaning that last part that I said.
“And Bob Turner said, ‘Hey, thank you so much. He’s he knows how good a putter you were, and that you helped Rory [McIlroy]’. And I’m like oh wow, I am so nervous. I was on edge really yesterday, particularly on the back nine when he had that poor stretch.”
Hideki Matsuyama survives late scare to win St Jude Championship
Matsuyama led by five shots going into the final day in Memphis, but a disastrous run saw Xander Schauffele and Viktor Hovland briefly slip in ahead of him.
The ultimate winner did, however, manage to get back on track just in time to finish ahead of the duo, who ended T2.
World number one Scottie Scheffler does, however, remain the man to beat going forward after finishing fourth.
The American tops the FedExCup points list heading into the BMW Championship, with Schauffele also in a very favourable position in second.
Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado hosts the next playoff event, with the field then cut from 50 to 30 for the Tour Championship at East Lake.
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