Whoever knew losing could pay so well? You would think that Matthew Wolff would be leaving the Wyndham Championship feeling a little defeated after being cut, but it turns out, he still found a way to win. Wolff won a cool $1 million after coming out on top in a competition that spanned the entire season.
The Aon Risk Reward Challenge is a culmination of holes golfers will face on Tour and are uniquely challenging. The two lowest scoring holes from each event determine a player’s ranking in the competition.
“There’s a lot of money to be made out on Tour, but I’m new out here and every little bit helps,” Wolff said. “Just happy that I got it done. And I knew about it kind of the last couple months, so on the Aon holes I was a little more nervous than I usually am, but played them pretty well and just came out on top.”
The 22-year-old topped the leaderboard this season with an average of 1.105 under par.
“I’m a pretty risky player and I guess it just happened to turn out in my favor on those holes,” he said. “I feel like I have a pretty good game plan every single week, but seems like those holes I just have a better one.”
Wolff didn’t have to sweat his competition after Louis Oosthuizen, who was fighting alongside him for first place, withdrew from the Wyndham Championship. It didn’t even take a full round for Wolff to swoop in and grab the big prize after the Oosthuizen’s departure.
After shooting a 69-70, Matthew Wolff missed the cut, but managed to end on a high note with a birdie to seal his $1 million dollar payday.
“If I’m going to win the Challenge, I want to win it because I play the best golf, not because someone gives it to me,” he said. “I feel like I did that and on those holes I happened to play them really well. I think I was averaging like a stroke under par every single week or according to the contest, so I played those holes correctly, just got to play the rest of the holes right.”
Great incentive