Max Greyserman sees big picture despite near miss at Wyndham Championship

GREENSBORO, N.C. – It was Max Greyserman’s Sunday at the Wyndham Championship, until it wasn’t.

The PGA TOUR rookie answered every bell for the first 31 holes of a marathon Sunday at Sedgefield Country Club, highlighted by a hole-out eagle from 91 yards at the par-4 13th (of his final round) that extended his lead to four shots with five holes to play. In his first start after a breakthrough runner-up finish at the 3M Open to solidify a FedExCup Playoffs berth, it looked like a coronation, the inevitable next step in a rapidly ascendant career arc.

Then reality bit. Greyserman’s tee shot at the par-4 14th went out of bounds to the right, and his third shot caught the thick rough left of the fairway, en route to a quadruple bogey. He rebounded with a two-putt birdie at the par-5 15th, but disaster struck again in the form of a four-putt double bogey at the par-3 16th, including three putts from 3 feet, 4 inches.

Thereby the script flipped in a jarring fashion. Greyserman closed with two pars to finish at 16 under, two back of winner Aaron Rai, who made birdie on the 72nd hole (playing one group ahead of Greyserman) for his first TOUR title.

(Matt Kuchar has yet to complete the final round and will do so Monday morning.)

If Greyserman felt shaken by the developments, he didn’t show it afterward. Maybe it was the perspective accrued from a wrist injury that wiped out most of his 2022 season and led him to consider potential career alternatives such as real estate. Maybe it was his introspective nature that inspires him to pursue information in creative ways (he once sought out Ben Griffin for a round of golf to chat about Griffin’s time away from the game, when he worked as a mortgage loan officer).

Greyserman, 29, sees the big picture and knows that he can look back on this experience as a stepping stone to his ultimate dreams in the game. He can bank how he felt down the stretch for the next time in this position. The New Jersey native moves from No. 63 to No. 47 on the FedExCup Playoffs and Eligibility Points List and will have a great chance to secure a spot in next year’s Signature Events (via the top 50 after next week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship). Although it’s a silver lining, the emotion he felt Sunday evening, as the North Carolina dusk turned to darkness, was justifiably bittersweet.

Still, he graciously met the media to reflect on the experience, mixing in some humor – “I’ve got to ask people not to put the cart paths on the right side” of his tee shot out-of-bounds at No. 14 – with some perspective.

“Obviously nervous, but I felt calm, collected,” Greyserman said afterward. “The nerves kind of go up in those last few holes when you're kind of right on the number or something like that, but I felt great all day and I knew there was a lot of pressure all day. I think I just need to take that away that I know how to play in those situations.

“Played really, really well this week. Played good enough to kind of run away with it. Obviously stuff happens in golf that sometimes it's not meant to be sometimes. I'm just going to walk away that I played really, really good golf, executed really well, had … a four-shot lead with five holes to go. If you're doing that in a PGA TOUR event, you're doing something exceptionally well, so that's what I'm going to walk away with.”

Greyserman spoke of his friendship with fellow TOUR pro Denny McCarthy, who has been close to his first TOUR title on several occasions (including a playoff loss to Akshay Bhatia at this year’s Valero Texas Open, where both players finished nine strokes clear of third place). McCarthy was on hand Sunday evening to debrief on the day with his close friend, offering words of encouragement along with consolation.

“Just special to have some friends there to kind of calm me down a little bit,” Greyserman said. “It's obviously been a difficult day … Stuff happens. I'm just going to walk away with more confidence, look at the positive things and learn from the mistakes.”

Don’t be surprised if both enter the winner’s circle soon enough. McCarthy has the right mentality for it, and Greyserman does too.