It can be a stressful way to win a golf tournament, but Nick Taylor has embraced to be due to Tours “Mr. Playoff.”
Taylor won the Sony Open in Hawaii in the playoffs last month, and he returns to the site for another extra hole victory when he defends the WM Phoenix Open this week in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Taylor is a five times winner on the tour and has gone to a playoffs to win each of its last three titles. He made an unlikely 72-foot eagle on the fourth playoffs at 2023 RBC Canadian Open for best English Tommy Fleetwood, a career height for Taylor when he became the first Canadian to win his National Open since 1954.
Eight months later he held Charley Hoffman at the Phoenix Open by doing Birdie on the second playoffs.
“I guess you gain confidence when you get into these situations the more you pull out successful results,” Taylor told reporters Tuesday. “But I’m as nervous in these situations as probably anyone else.
“I feel that I have more clarity in those playoffs of what I am trying to do. Everything you are trying to work in golf, if you are over a swing or a putt and there is doubt or if there is determination, it probably won’t End well, and for some reason in these situations I have a lot of clarity and no doubt.
Taylor has a 3-0 record in the playoffs on the tour. He pointed out that if each of these three went elsewhere, his career would be “another story.”
“Being on the other side of it every time has really been a catapult of where my career has gone,” he said.
Taylor was neck and neck with Colombias Nico Echavarria through four rounds last month in Honolulu. No problem: He birded the second playoffs and Echavarria couldn’t match it.
“It definitely helped,” said Taylor, ranked as No. 29 in the world. “I was only in the first two signature events, so it really opened my schedule, Majors, obviously. For kinds of end (2024) did not play my best, but to be able to start the year recruiting offseason and do well was good.”
The 36-year-old is +5000 to win this week at Betmgm when he is facing a strong field with a heading by Scottie Scheffler and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, both back-to-back champions in Phoenix in previous years.
If Taylor is to do the same, he said he will have to keep a winning mindset Thursday to Sunday.
“I think so much in golf benefits from the opportunities you get, if it is somewhere from trying to get your PGA Tour cards that I have been forced to deal with before or keep your card or – I feel like in these situations before Have I been able to take care of or take advantage of these opportunities, ”he said.
“Again, I just feel that I have more clarity when I try to win. It’s not necessarily that I go on tee and expect to win or be there in the latest holes, but just come back to the simple things in the process, and I have done a really good job when I get into these moments. ”
-Field level media
