Carnoustie meets its match in K.J. Choi at The Senior Open Championship

Carnoustie Golf Links is one of the most demanding links found anywhere in the world, and even across four unseasonably sunny days in Scotland at The Senior Open Championship presented by Rolex, it asked a great deal of K.J. Choi. Each time it presented Choi a stern challenge to test his resolve, the stocky former powerlifter from Wando, South Korea, put his head down and answered, exhibiting the resiliency that has defined him in a starry and unlikely career.

Carnoustie is a survival proposition, man vs. elements, and not usually a place for sizzling sub-par runs. Thus, a sensational six-hole stretch played in 6 under par Sunday (Nos. 9-14) lifted Choi, 54, above the crowd and led him to his first senior major championship on Sunday. Despite a poor start to his final round – he was 3 over through six holes – Choi, who was protecting a one-shot lead to start the day, returned a 2-under 70 to win by two shots over Australia’s Richard Green in the final major of the PGA TOUR Champions season.

Choi struggled to manage the slower speed of Carnoustie’s greens to start his round on Sunday, and he continued to give away a lead he’d steadily built through three days. Just as he had rebounded from back-to-back double bogeys late on Saturday with a magnificent birdie at Carnoustie’s penal closing hole to get in with 70, he would bounce back from Sunday’s slow start, too, producing a stirring stretch of golf that separated him from the field.

Choi’s run started with a 10-footer for birdie at the par-4 ninth, his first birdie of the day, and he was just warming up. After a tap-in birdie at the par-5 12th, where he pitched to a foot from beyond the green, Choi stuffed an approach to 2 feet at the 165-yard 13th, then provided an exclamation with a 35-footer for eagle at the 513-yard 14th. There, he faced 235 yards for his second shot and needed only 195 yards to clear a bunker protecting the entry to the green. It called for a perfect 5-iron, and he pulled it off, his ball bounding onto the green and finishing 35 feet from the hole.

When the right-to-left eagle putt tumbled in along the right edge of the cup, Choi, his hand raised to the sky, had popped free from a handful of contenders to emerge at 11 under par, four shots clear of his closest pursuers. For all the chasers, it was a stunning gut punch. Choi, the first player from Korea to win on the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour, and a man with 33 international victories to his credit – they include THE PLAYERS Championship in 2011 and seven other PGA TOUR titles – knew what to do from there.

Choi earned his first senior major title, becoming the only player in the field to reach, then finish, double digits below par at demanding Carnoustie. He completed 72 holes at 10-under 278. A safely-played bogey at the 499-yard 18th (where Jean van de Velde made triple bogey to fall into a playoff at The Open Championship in 1999, which he eventually lost) coupled with a lengthy birdie by Green at 18 left the winning margin at two shots, but it was fairly stress-free for Choi once his tee ball at 18 stopped just feet from tumbling into that darned, winding burn. A couple of easy wedges, a couple of putts, and Choi had his own scaled-down claret jug.

Winning an Open title in Scotland carried great significance to Choi. The Open Championship was one of the few golf tournaments he could watch growing up in Korea, before he entered the military. He credited the links for providing a difficult exam – “Carnoustie (Golf Links) unbelievably tough,” Choi said, smiling – and noted the significance his victory will carry back in his native country. “Is my dream,” Choi said. “Very historical for Korean player to win this.”

Once Choi peeled off out practically out of sight, it was left for Green to battle England’s Paul Broadhurst – a winner the last time The Senior Open was staged at Carnoustie, eight years ago – to tussle for second. Green, 53, a tall, thin left-hander who finished T4 at The Open Championship (won by Padraig Harrington) some 17 years earlier on the same links, would birdie the last to cement the runner-up finish. Green has yet to win on PGA TOUR Champions, but again, he was right there, showing a complete game. That’s three times in 2024 that Green has been third or better at a senior major, including a runner-up finish at the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship.

Broadhurst, 58, kept a clean card on Sunday until his bogey at the demanding 17th, where his approach with a fairway metal finished short and left of the green and he failed to get up and down. He shot 70 and finished third despite struggling with arthritis in his right foot. It was the sixth top-10 finish of 2024 for Broadhurst, who is amid a resurgent season as he mulls his retirement from the game after next season. Earlier in 2024, Broadhurst won in Dallas (Invited Celebrity Classic).

“Obviously (Choi) has played really well around the back. I don't know what happened, but he went from nowhere to four clear,” Broadhurst said. “He's obviously killed it somewhere around the mid-part of the round.

“So great stuff to him. He's played really well. I know he had a couple of poor holes to finish yesterday having been well ahead, but he deserves it.”

Broadhurst had petitioned to use a cart at Carnoustie, and when his request was denied, he played 72 holes with the aid of a walking stick. Broadhurst shot 70 on Sunday.

“Last six was a bit of a struggle,” said Broadhurst, a winner of two previous senior majors (2016 Senior Open, 2018 KitchenAid Senior PGA). “Running on empty, I think.”

Stephen Ames, 60, already a two-time winner in 2024 and seeking his 10th PGA TOUR Champions victory, shot 71 and finished alone in fourth. Ames, six times a winner in the last two seasons, made things interesting by playing his first 14 holes in 4 under, a stretch that included a long eagle putt at the 14th. But his challenge ended there; he made three bogeys over his final four holes.

Seven players tied for fifth at 286, a group that included Harrington, who shot 72 Sunday despite starting his round triple bogey-double bogey; Bernhard Langer, a four-time Senior Open champion who, at age 66, shot 70; and Steven Alker (71), who was celebrating his 53rd birthday.

It was a strong year for first-timers on PGA TOUR Champions. Four of the five majors were captured by players who had not previously won a senior major. Doug Barron won the Regions Tradition; Ernie Els broke through at Firestone, winning the Kaulig Companies Championship; and Choi finished things off in style at Carnoustie.

In between, England’s Richard Bland (KitchenAid Senior PGA) was another first-time senior major winner, too, but he followed that effort by winning the U.S. Senior Open at Newport, going 2-for-2 in his only two PGA TOUR Champions starts. Bland did not compete at Carnoustie.

Choi said playing in the strong winds of Texas, which he encounters often in his adopted U.S. base just outside Dallas, helped to get him ready for Carnoustie’s windy conditions. That, and his tough-as-nails resolve to always overcome whatever is in front of him, something that has served him well through the years. It certainly paid nicely at rugged ol’ Carnoustie.