Dufner delights in avenging Atlanta pain

Jason Dufner had sat in the media centre two years previously at Atlanta Athletic Club as the disappointed yet philosophical PGA Championship runner-up. Sunday night he was back on stage at Oak Hill as a newly-minted Major champion.

Having tasted bitter defeat to Keegan Bradley in the 2011 PGA, losing a four-shot lead over the final four holes and then a play-off for the title, the American had struck a determined tone that sweltering August evening in the Atlanta suburbs, vowing his setback would not be the defining moment of his life in golf.

“I’m not a history buff as far as golf goes,” Dufner said at his runners-up press conference.

“I know the media tries to define careers on certain players, ‘You did this, and you didn’t do this’; I’m not into that. I just want to play golf. I love playing golf. I love the competition. And I want to be as good as I can be. If that’s 20th in the world with no Majors, or first in the world with 10 Majors, or never to win a Tour event, I’ll be fine with it.

“I’m not going to let this define my career. I have a lot of things ahead of me, I’m young, not as young as Keegan is, but I have a lot of time to play golf and hopefully I’ll have more time to win Majors and use what happened today as a positive.”

Two years later on a slightly cooler Sunday evening in Rochester, New York, the 36-year-old got his reward, following up his second-round, course-record, major-record-tying low round of 63 on Oak Hill’s East Course with a two-under-par 68 to overtake and then hold off nearest rival Jim Furyk and achieve his Major breakthrough with a two-shot victory.

Just as he had done for most of the week, Dufner’s ball striking was excellent, and when he did miss a fairway it was not by so much to be punished by the really thick stuff in the graduated rough. It was textbook greens in regulation golf with some great scrambling thrown in when required.

Not that there was any scrambling required on the par-four fifth hole on Sunday, when he first took the outright lead for the first time from 54-hole leader Furyk with a superb iron approach to two feet for a comfortable birdie.

Furyk made it a tie at the next hole but Dufner would not trail again. And when Furyk bogeyed the ninth, a two-shot advantage was maintained throughout the back nine.

Fittingly, after his wife Amanda had been the recipient of probably the first 18th green bum grab seen at a Major, Dufner met one-time conqueror and friend Keegan Bradley as he made his way back to the clubhouse as the 2013 PGA Champion.

“We just kind of bro hugged,” said Dufner of the man who calls him Duffdaddy. “He just said, ‘I’m proud of you’. And I just said, ‘Thanks a lot, it means a lot for you to be here’.

“I was probably over what happened in Atlanta, 95% of it, by the time we got back home at Auburn.

“You always carry those scars with you, he always jabbed at me a little bit about having one of these [trophies] in his house. And now I’ve got one, too. It’s pretty neat to come back and win a PGA.”

Dufner succeeds Rory McIlroy as champion and puts his name on the famous Wanamaker Trophy alongside many of the game’s greatest names, although he admitted it was not until finally winning a Major that he felt he belonged in their company.

“It’s a great accomplishment. Hopefully it will propel me to some better things, some better golf, some more tournaments won, Majors won, more Ryder Cups, more Presidents Cups.

“I don’t think you can claim that you belong in that category until you’ve done it.”