Fortune favors the brave.
From the beginning, the tale of the final round followed that script for Retief Goosen.
Goosen outplayed the field by three strokes in the final round, finishing at 15 under par to win the Hoag Classic on Sunday at Newport Beach Country Club.
An eight-under-par round started with a bounce on the first hole. Playing his second shot as part of the final grouping, Goosen instantly flipped the leaderboard when his approach struck the flagstick in the air and dropped in for an eagle.
“[Hole] No. 1 was a tricky bunker shot coming out of the bunker, and you had to fly it over that ridge,” Goosen said. “My main goal was to obviously land it up there as far as I can, and I was thinking, ‘If I hit a good shot, probably finish 5 feet past the hole,’ and it just came out a little hotter than I expected, and it hit the flag and went straight in, so that was very, very lucky.