Las Vegas PGA Tour memories: Tiger began to roar here

With the PGA Tour pulling out of Las Vegas after 41 years, area golf fans are left with four decades of memories from the tournament that went by many names and was played on a dozen area courses over the years.

Here are five highlights from the tournaments:

1. Tiger’s breakthrough

Tiger Woods has won 82 times on the PGA Tour, and it all started in Las Vegas in 1996. Playing his fifth tournament as a pro, Woods overpowered TPC Summerlin on Sunday with an 8-under 64 to match Davis Love III at the top of the leaderboard. He won on the first playoff hole when Love airmailed the green with his approach and couldn’t get up and down for par.

The final round brought out an additional 10,000 fans hoping to follow golf’s new phenom, and they weren’t shy about their support. The raucous crowd was a sign that golf had forever changed.

Six months later, Woods won the Masters, an event he got into thanks to his win in Las Vegas. And the rest is history.

2. Playoff history

Light was fading as three players battled through three playoff holes at the 2010 Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals Open, and it appeared the champion wouldn’t be decided until Monday. Jonathan Byrd, Martin Laird and Cameron Percy decided to play one more hole with the caveat any of them could stop if they thought it was too dark. Byrd only needed one swing.

Byrd aced the par-3 17th, but never saw the ball go in the hole because of the fading light. Three players had previously holed out for eagle to win playoffs on the PGA Tour, but Byrd became the first to do it with a hole-in-one.

3. Going low

Chip Beck was a three-time PGA Tour winner when he arrived for the 1991 Las Vegas Invitational, but nobody saw what was coming during the third round at Sunrise Golf Club.

Beck became the second player in history to shoot a 59 in competition, making 13 birdies and five pars. Al Geiberger had been the first to reach the magic number 14 years earlier in Memphis, Tennessee. Jim Furyk went one lower with a 58 on the par-70 TPC Highlands at the 2016 Travelers Championship, but Beck still shares the record for birdies in a round.

The irony for Beck is that he failed to win that week, settling for a tie for third behind winner Andrew Magee.

4. Triple jackpot

Nobody hit the jackpot in Las Vegas more than Jim Furyk. The 2003 U.S. Open champion won 17 times on the PGA Tour, with his first win and three of his first four in Las Vegas.

Furyk won the 1995, 1998 and 1999 Las Vegas Invitationals, making him the only three-time winner of the tournament.

5. Redemption day

Tiger Woods isn’t the only big name to make Las Vegas his debut win. Patrick Cantlay pulled off the trick in 2017, marking a triumph over injury and tragedy and starting him on his way to becoming one of the top players in the world.

Cantlay had left UCLA in 2013 as the top amateur and No. 1 college player in the nation. But a sore back became diagnosed as a stress fracture, sidelining him for more than two years. Then, upon his return, his caddie was killed by a hit-and-run driver in front of Cantlay. He overcame the injury and tragedy to win in Las Vegas 18 months later in a playoff with Alex Cejka and Whee Kim.

Decision day

Drake Harvey, the two-time Class 4A boys state golf champion, has mapped out his future.

The junior at Somerset Sky Pointe Academy has committed to play college golf at BYU following his graduation in 2026.

Harvey had numerous offers from Division I schools and made the announcement last week after narrowing his choices to BYU, UNLV, Washington, Missouri and Arizona. The choice of BYU should come as no surprise, since his father and grandfather also played golf for the Cougars.

Harvey is 94th in the nation in the latest American Junior Golf Association rankings.

Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at grobertson@gmail.com.