Monday Qualifiers for any event are inherently competitive regardless of the level, but when the PGA Tour comes to town — especially in the Mecca of pro golf, West Palm Beach — for the Honda Classic Monday Q, even the pre-qualifiers are packed.
With 130 players in the field on Monday at Banyan Cay Resort and Golf, including former Tour winners and All-Americans sprinkled across practically every group, only four would earn the right to tee it up at PGA National this weekend.
- Three spots were filled immediately: Sam Stevens shot 65, and Fabian Gomez & Martin Contini each shot 66 to grab the top three spots.
- Sixteen (!) other pros tied with 5-under par 67s, requiring a Tuesday morning 16-for-1 playoff.
How does a 16-for-1 playoff work?
The 16 players showed back up Tuesday morning and were split into four groups of four. Playing the par-5 first at Banyan Cay, Rick Lamb, a Tennessee alum who moved to South Florida last year, piped a drive and hit a 4-iron from 203 yards to some 35 feet.
Lamb sank the left-to-right breaker and waited to see if any of the other 15 players could match his eagle. They couldn’t, and Lamb got the last spot in the field.
Monday Qualifiers to advance to @TheHondaClassic:
Sam Stevens (-7)
Fabian Gomez (-6)
Martin Contini (-6)
Rick Lamb (-5)**16-for-1 playoff pic.twitter.com/BojN4rF0JQ
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 22, 2022
Lamb has bounced around the PGA Tour, the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Canada and PGA Tour Latinoamerica over the past eight years, so he’s no stranger to the grind. But that doesn’t make getting into his adopted hometown event any less sweet.
