With 3rd-place showing in Bermuda, Denver native Mark Hubbard posts best individual finish on PGA Tour in over 2 years; Coloradan Connor Jones places 65th in PGA Tour debut
By Gary Baines – 11/17/2024
Four years ago, a Denver native looking for his first PGA Tour victory came ever so close to getting it at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.
On Sunday, a bit of deja vu almost played out for another golfer born in Denver.
Four years after Wyndham Clark finished second in a playoff in Bermuda, fellow Denver native Mark Hubbard was in the hunt for the title down the stretch on Sunday before finishing tied for third in the penultimate event of the 2024 FedExCup Fall schedule.
It’s Hubbard’s best showing in an individual event on the PGA Tour since another third-place finish at the 2022 Barbasol Championship. (He also placed third in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event this season, with partner Ryan Brehm.) The best showing ever on the PGA Tour for the Colorado Academy alum was a runner-up at the 2019 Houston Open.
Overall, Hubbard has finished third or better four times on the PGA Tour.
The showing moved Hubbard up to No. 63 in the FedExCup Fall standings. The top 70 in those standings after this coming week’s season-ending RSM Classic will be exempt into full-field PGA Tour events next season as well as for the prestigious Players Championship. Should Hubbard finish in the 51-60 range, he’ll also land spots into two lucrative signature events, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis Invitational.
In Bermuda, Hubbard closed with a 5-under-par 66 in windy conditions and shot 68 or lower all four rounds for a 15-under-par total. He ended up four strokes behind champion Rafael Campos, who celebrated his first PGA Tour victory in the same week he and his wife welcomed a baby daughter.
Hubbard, a 35-year-old who swept the CGA junior major titles in 2007, was just a stroke out of the lead early on the back nine on Sunday.
“I think this is the best I’ve ever felt about my game this late in the year,” he said after the round. “I was balancing some equipment stuff and finally found a set of irons that I’m obsessed with and found a putter that I really love.”
Hubbard, who recently surpassed $10 million in career PGA Tour earnings, won $407,100 for his showing.
Meanwhile, Connor Jones of Westminster, who landed a spot in the Butterfield Bermuda Championship by winning the season-long Elite Amateur Series over the summer, earned a paycheck ($14,766) in his first PGA Tour start. After rounds of 72-68-71-73, he ended up in 65th place at even par.
Denver area resident Martin Laird and former Air Force Academy golfer Tom Whitney, needing top 125 showings in the FedExCup Fall standings to keep their PGA Tour cards, will go into this coming week’s season finale 152nd and 164th, respectively, in the standings.
For all the scores from the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, CLICK HERE.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com