Taylor Moore wins first PGA Tour title at the Valspar Championship

Taylor Moore made birdie on two of his final four holes to earn his first PGA Tour title at the Valspar Championship.

Moore, 29, erased a three-stroke overnight deficit by shooting 4-under 67 on Sunday at Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead Course at Palm Harbor, Florida. Moore finished with a 72-hole total of 10-under 274, a stroke better than Adam Schenk and two better than Jordan Spieth and Tommy Fleetwood.

“Really solid player that’s been knocking on the door,” Spieth said of Moore, a fellow Dallas resident.

Moore hadn’t recorded a top-10 finish on the PGA Tour this season. He entered the week ranked No. 103 in the world, but canned an 18-foot birdie putt at nine to join the trophy hunt and stuck his approach shot inside 5 feet at the 12^th to climb a stroke closer. For the week, he was 64-for-64 inside 7 feet.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything close to that,” Moore said. “Just a testament to there work I’ve put in with my coach and my team and that was pretty sick to see.”

Moore made back-to-back birdies – a 6-footer at 15 and a 27-footer at 16 – to tie Schenk for the lead at 10 under. He said he didn’t see a scoreboard until he reached the 17th green.

For a share of the lead!@RazorbackMGolf alum @TaylorMooreGolf birdies No. 16 @ValsparChamp.

He is seeking his first TOUR win 👀 pic.twitter.com/6hmNgONWkY

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 19, 2023

Schenk, 31, played in his 10^th straight tournament as he attempted to grab as many FedEx Cup points as he could before the birth of his first child. Wife Kourtney, who is eight months pregnant, flew in on Sunday morning and walked the entire round in his gallery.

Schenk, the 54-hole leader, chipped in for birdie at the first and built a two-stroke leader before stumbling with bogeys and Nos. 6 and 8. But he responded with birdies at Nos. 7 and 9, where he drained a 23-foot birdie putt. That was his longest putt of the tournament at that point but that figure didn’t last long. Schenk poured in a 71-foot birdie at the 12^th, the longest made putt of his career, to claim the lead at 10-under and lifted his right arm to the sky.

The LONGEST putt of Adam Schenk’s career gives him the solo lead at the @ValsparChamp! 👏

📺: NBC and @peacock pic.twitter.com/iCEJ4b5Zfs

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) March 19, 2023

He strung together five straight pars and shared the lead standing on the tee of the 72nd hole. Then he hooked his drive near a tree at 18 and had to play his next shot left-handed. He rammed his 41-foot par putt to remain tied with Moore and force a playoff and it the flagstick but had too much pace and wouldn’t go down. He finished with a 70.

“It stinks,” Schenk said, despite recording the best finish of his career. “I hit a really bad drive on the last hole. I toed it. Wish I could have lightly hit somebody and stayed where I had a chance to get to the green, but it did not, and I didn’t deserve it.”

Adam Schenk takes a left-handed approach and finds the right rough. pic.twitter.com/aAJyFM3Y3N

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 19, 2023

Spieth, 29, won this tournament in 2015 and was seeking his 14^th Tour title. He canned a 10-foot birdie putt at 14 to join the party at 10 under. Spieth worked wonders from the sand, getting up and down 12 of 14 times for the week, including at the difficult par-3 15^th.

“It was the boring round I was looking for,” said Spieth, who stayed bogey-free for the day.

But he fanned his tee shot at the dogleg par-4 16^th into the water guarding the right side of the hole and had to scramble to save bogey. He missed a 7-foot birdie putt at 17 and couldn’t get a 48-foot birdie putt to drop. He missed the comebacker and closed in 70 to finish tied for third with Fleetwood.

The 32-year-old Englishman has six DP World Tour victories and ranked as highly as No. 9 in the world in 2019, but he still hasn’t won on the PGA Tour. He had a share of the lead until he made a bogey at the par-5 14^th hole. He closed in 70. Despite remaining winless, Fleetwood’s career earnings on the PGA Tour alone surpassed $15 million.

Two-time defending champion Sam Burns fell short of a three-peat but made a valiant effort with a final-round 67 to finish sixth.

Once asked to name the most interesting fact about him that golf fans should know, Moore said, “Well, grew up a baseball guy, so I was a pretty high-level baseball player until I was about 15 years old and actually had a scholarship from Arkansas for baseball before golf and ended up deciding to play this.