Scottie Scheffler defeated Tom Kim in a playoff on Sunday to secure victory at the Travelers Championship despite disruption from activists storming the green.
Scheffler finished the tournament shooting 22-under through four rounds as Kim tied Scheffler with a birdie putt on the final hole of the day, forcing a playoff between the two golfers to determine the winner.
This playoff did not last long. Scheffler hit his tee shot roughly 10 feet from the hole, while Kim’s landed in a bunker.
Scheffler then two-putted the ball into the hole to secure the par, winning another tournament this season after Kim overshot his ball on his second stroke.
Scheffler quickly praised Kim while celebrating the victory with his wife and six-week-old son, saying Kim should be proud of the way he performed and that it is “fun competing against your friends.”
“But at the same time, it’s difficult. Because part of me wants him to miss the putt and part of me wants him to make the putt. … But he should remember that putt he made on 18, because it was pretty special. And he’s a great player and a great champion,” he said, per NBC Sports.
Scheffler took home a prize of $3.6 million for coming in first place while also securing his sixth victory of the season.
By leaving the Travelers Championship with yet another tournament win, Scheffler became the fourth player ever and the first since Tiger Woods in 2009 to have six or more tour wins in a single season, per Sky Sports Golf.
Kim went home with the second-place prize of $2.16 million, while Tom Hoge and Sungjae Im tied for third place and split the prize money for the third and fourth-place finishes, each going home with $1.16 million, per CBS Sports.
This tournament included multiple memorable moments from various rounds, one of the most memorable being Cameron Young’s becoming just the 13th player in PGA Tour history to shoot a sub-60, finishing with an 11-under 59 in the third round, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Another one of these moments came during Sunday’s closing round when climate change activists stormed onto the green of the 18th hole.
These protestors, later discovered to be from the group “Extinction Rebellion NYC,” ran onto the green with colored powder to protest the “worldwide danger of climate breakdown” before being arrested by police, as reported by Yahoo Sports.
Officials from the tournament quickly began to fix up the green while the crowd broke into chants of “U.S.A.” while police officers carried the protesters off the premises, according to David Pivtorak.
Scheffler spoke about the activists running onto the green and said moments like that can “kind of rattle you a little bit,” noting that he is glad he and Kim had the chance to collect themselves leading into the playoff.
“That can be a stressful situation, and you would hate for the tournament to end on something weird happening because of a situation like that,” he said, per NBC Sports.
“Tom and I both tried to calm each other down so we could give it our best shot there on 18.”
Akshay Bhatia, who was on the green alongside Scheffler and Kim during the protest, said following the tournament that he “didn’t even really know what was happening” and quickly became nervous as they ran onto the green.
“All of a sudden, four, five people come running on the green … I was in shock and my heart rate was high. It got low and then once that kind of happened I was just freaked out, I just tried to get over where everyone was. It was hard to do it, I think it was just weird,” he explained, per Yahoo Sports.
