Brandon Matthews played his way out of contention by the midway point of this week’s PGA Tour LOCALiQ Series Championship.
Matthews spent Thursday and Friday bypassing more than half the field.
The Pittston Area graduate shot consecutive 67s at TPC Sugarloaf in Duluth, Ga. to climb from 68th after two rounds all the way to his final placement of a three-way tie for 22nd.
Matthews started with rounds of 74 Tuesday and 77 Wednesday. He teed off on 10 in the last two rounds and was 8-over-par for the week after going out in 37 on the back nine Thursday.
The remainder of the tournament was about resiliency for Matthews, a 26-year-old from Dupont, now playing out of Jupiter, Fla.
With 11 birdies and two eagles over the last 27 holes, it “was definitely a positive finish,” according to Matthews.
Matthews shot 6-under-par, 30 on his last nine holes of the third round with four birdies and an eagle on the 548-yard, par-5, 8th hole.
After a double bogey on his third hole Friday, Matthews drove the green on the next hole, the 310-yard 13th, and made the 12-foot putt for eagle to start a stretch in which he played the next 14 holes in 7-under before a closing bogey.
The 10-under-par finish for the second half of the tournament was matched only by fourth-place finisher Brendon Doyle among the 75 players who completed the event. Doyle was one of only two players to go lower than Matthews’ 67 Thursday and only one player beat his score Friday.
David Pastore, a 28-year-old University of Virginia graduate from Greenwich, Conn. who is a regular on the PGA’s Mackenzie Tour in Canada, won with a 14-under-par, 278. He started with three straight rounds in the 60s before closing with a 71.
Matthews began 2020 with his first-ever PGA Tour appearance at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He said Friday that he will conclude the year with two events on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica where he has his biggest career victory to date.
Much of the Latinoamerica and the PGA’s other international tours were wiped out this year by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. That led to the creation of the LOCALiQ Series to try to replace some of the lost international events.
Matthews made the cut in four of seven LOCALiQ Series events to qualify for the season-ending championship.
