Ten-year pro Kurt Kitayama needed all 65 shots Sunday to win the 3M Open in Blaine by a single shot, but it might have been one over all the others that won him his second PGA Tour title and enabled his mother to watch the TV again.
He chipped in from the thick greenside rough on the third hole to give his day a birdie-birdie-birdie start. He got up and down from 75 feet for a birdie at the par-5 12th. He hit a wedge from under a tree to save par at the 15th and saved par again at the closing 18th hole with an awkwardly angled, downhill bunker shot from above the green that was good enough to set up a two-putt to win.
But none of those shots for Kitayama was bigger and more dramatic than his 191-yard fairway bunker shot at No. 14, struck — and stuck at a back flagstick — with a 7-iron.
Kitayama’s 3-foot birdie putt re-established a three-shot lead and kept the field from seriously challenging the 32-year-old the rest of the way.
“To hit it that like I did was unbelievable,” said Kitayama, whose four-round total of 23-under-par 261 was a stroke off the tournament record set two years ago by Lee Hodges. “That was a very big shot.”
Challengers Jake Knapp and Sam Stevens came up short. Knapp trailed by three shots on the par-5 finishing hole, but his second shot at 18 came up just short into the lake, even with the wind. Stevens hit into a bad lie on the same hole that kept him from trying to go for an eagle that he needed to apply pressure.
“I’m not too disappointed,” said Stevens, who shot 66 to finish alone in second at 22 under and now has three top-10 finishes this year.
With his older brother, Daniel, carrying his bag and his parents watching at home in California, Kitayama still needed to save par on 18 — “That bunker shot on 18, making sure I got it on the green, that was big,” he said — and earned a second career victory to go with his Arnold Palmer Invitational from March 2023 at Bay Hill.
