Keith Mitchell dunks eagle from 151 yards to take Valspar lead

For a lot of the third spherical of the 2024 Valspar Championship on Saturday at Innisbrook, it seemed as if three, or 5, or much more gamers may share the lead heading into Sunday. But then PGA Tour veteran Keith Mitchell closed with a bang that shut the door on that storyline.

With one gap left to play late on Saturday night, Mitchell was tied for the lead at eight underneath with three different gamers: Seamus Power, Mackenzie Hughes and Peter Malnati.

For Mitchell, all that was left to navigate was the difficult 417-yard, par-4 18th gap on the Copperhead Course, with its tight fairway protected on either side by bunkers, and the inexperienced equally defended up forward.

A par would imply going to sleep sharing the lead. A birdie would imply proudly owning the 54-hole lead all on his personal. Mitchell did one higher.

After expertly lacing a wooden off the tee 266 yards down the green, the 32-year-old had 151 left to the pin. He pulled out a wedge, then despatched his ball crusing within the air and watched because it landed a foot from the flag and bounced instantly into the underside of the cup.

Actually, Mitchell didn’t watch it. As his ball flew towards the inexperienced, he lowered his head and rubbed his eye as if one thing had flown into it after his swing. When somebody advised him the excellent news, his face registered a short second of shock earlier than he began to rejoice along with his caddie.

Check out the shot beneath.

Not solely did the dramatic hole-out rely for an eagle-2, it gave Mitchell a two-shot lead heading into Sunday’s ultimate spherical and a implausible alternative to acquire the second PGA Tour win of his profession.

Mitchell’s solely Tour victory to this level got here on the 2019 Honda Classic. He has two top-10 finishes up to now this 12 months after incomes 5 prime 10s final 12 months.

Kevin Cunningham

Golf.com Editor

As managing producer for GOLF.com, Cunningham edits, writes and publishes tales on GOLF.com, and manages the model’s e-newsletters, which attain greater than 1.4 million subscribers every month. A former two-time intern, he additionally helps maintain GOLF.com buzzing outdoors the news-breaking tales and repair content material supplied by our reporters and writers, and works with the tech crew within the improvement of latest merchandise and modern methods to ship an interesting website to our viewers.