BATON ROUGE – For the 11th time in his illustrious PGA Tour career, LSU great David Toms finished among the Top 10 of the leaderboard at a major championship as he fired a 3-under par 67 in the final round to earn his seventh-place finish at the 2013 PGA Championship held this past weekend at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y.
After opening with a 1-over 71 on Thursday, Toms was brilliant with back-to-back rounds of 1-under 69 on Friday and Saturday before wrapping up the championship with a 3-under 67 on Sunday to finish six shots off the pace at 4-under par 276 for the tournament for a seventh-place finish at $259,000 payday for his efforts.
Auburn graduate and PGA Tour veteran Jason Dufner scored a two-stroke victory over former U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk with a winning score of 10-under par 270, including a 7-under 63 in the second round.
It marked the 11th-straight year in which Toms had made the cut at the PGA Championship, and the second time in three years that he finished among the Top 10 of the final leaderboard following a tie for fourth place at Atlanta Athletic Club in Johns Creek, Ga., in 2011. The winner of the 2001 PGA Championship has now earned four top-10 finishes in the event in his professional career.
Toms also continues a streak of three-straight seasons with a top-10 finish in a major championship as he also tied for fourth place at the 2012 U.S. Open held at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif.
“He was firing at flags,” caddie Scott Gneiser told The Shreveport Times of Toms’ performance at the PGA Championship. “He really started feeling in control of his golf ball, especially with his irons and his hybrids.”
Toms’ performance will surely see a spike in the rankings as he’s expected to move up 34 spots from No. 126 to No. 92 in the World Golf Ranking and 27 spots from 172nd place to 145th place in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings, according to a report by Roy Lang III in the The Shreveport Times. With the Top 125 players on the final FedEx Cup points chart advancing to the playoffs, Toms will have one last opportunity to improve in the coming weekend at the Wyndham Championship being held in Greensboro, N.C., as he will likely need a top-five finish.