After a long journey through every major golf tour except the PGA, Kitayama finally broke through to claim his first PGA victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. It may not be a major, but it\u2019s the closest event the PGA holds to one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tournament boasts a field consisting of every top player on tour and a course designed by The King – Arnold Palmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kurt Kitayama lived up to Arnold\u2019s quote showing extreme grit and mental toughness after he made a triple bogey on the 9th hole. In one hole he went from being two ahead of Jordan Spieth to trailing by one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the back nine, every player in the field was unable to make clutch putts when it mattered. Meanwhile… Kitayama just kept making par’s and keeping himself in the tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, I\u2019m not leading any more. I just fought back hard, and I\u2019m proud of myself for that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then on the 17th hole he drained a 18 foot birdie to take a one shot lead. Needing just a par on 18 to seal the victory, Kurt hit his approach shot to 20 feet and then nearly sunk the birdie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And when I say nearly, the putt was literally handing on the edge of the hole. Kitayama marked the ball and tapped it in a performance worthy of “playing boldly” in Arnold\u2019s tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a long journey through every major golf tour except the PGA, Kitayama finally broke through to claim his first PGA victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. It may not be a major, but it\u2019s the closest event the PGA holds to one. The tournament boasts a field consisting of every top player on tour… Read More »Kurt Kitayama triumphs at Arnold Palmer Invitational for his first PGA Tour championship after overcoming Bay Hill obstacles<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[23,30,29],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-23","tag-arnold-palmer-invitational","tag-kurt-kitayama"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738,"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.golfbpm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}