NAPLES, Fla. — Nick Taylor is watching a video on a phone, but it’s not just any video, it’s the putt. The biggest putt of his life. The most electric moment in Canadian golf (Canadian sport? Maybe all of sport?) in 2023. His hands are on his hips, and he takes a deep breath — still — when he’s asked what it means. A 69-year drought over in 72 feet.
Before Taylor’s year-ending event, the Grant Thornton Invitational, he stayed with caddie David Markle for a few days. Markle, a fellow Canadian, has a couple of big photos from the putt displayed in his home.
“There, when it goes in,” Taylor says, pointing at the screen and when his life changed, “there’s a photo of that split second where we were like, ‘Did that just happen?’ and he’s charging at me. I remember that feeling, mostly.
“Everything after that, I kind of don’t.”
When Taylor Swift was named by Time Magazine as its Person of the Year, the writer tasked with putting Swift’s year into words called the songstress “the main character of the world.” Well, in that moment, this Taylor quickly became the main character of Canadian golf.
Taylor, 35, of Abbotsford, B.C., won the RBC Canadian Open this summer by rolling in an eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole to defeat Tommy Fleetwood — in the process becoming the first Canadian male to win the national golf open since 1954. It was the longest putt Taylor had ever made in his PGA Tour career. Those are the facts.
Through this season on the PGA Tour, one of constant change and drama — for better or worse — Taylor delivered his best-ever body of work at the game’s highest level. In a year when Canadian professional golf hit a fever pitch (besides Taylor’s triumph, there were three other wins by Canadians on the PGA Tour; Brooke Henderson added to her winning total on the LPGA Tour; Canadians won the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Canada, PGA Tour Latinoamerica; And Alena Sharp won both on the Epson Tour and captured a bronze medal at the Pan Am Games), Taylor’s win will go down in history as the most iconic and, perhaps, most inspiring. We’ll see, of course, on that. It took 20 years after Mike Weir’s Masters win for Canadian golf to get to this point.
Regardless of what comes next, for now Canadians got another where-were-you-when moment to add to their sporting collection.
“It gives me goosebumps, still. Looking at that,” Taylor says when the video of the putt finishes. “Even the putt on 18 in regulation — the amount of people lining the fairway and their split-second delayed reaction was amazing. I’ve had so many people coming up to me saying where they were and how they reacted.
“Even last night (at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Fla.) there were people who were saying, ‘we were at our golf course and people were in tears.’”
He doesn’t mind hearing the stories, of course. Nor did he mind when RBC Canadian Open tournament organizers unveiled what they had planned to honour his winning moment — a minimalist design tweak to the tournament’s logo for 2024. Previously it had an old-school golfer with a newsboy cap in the place of the ‘I’ in ‘Canadian.’ That image has been replaced by Taylor’s silhouette. Officials and other folks with the PGA Tour at the Grant Thornton Invitational called out ‘Hey logo!’ when they saw Taylor.
“I give Nick shit for mostly everything and I have for 15-plus years now, but I am not giving him shit for the coolest logo in golf,” fellow PGA Tour winner, Netflix star and Taylor’s best friend Joel Dahmen says. “I am jealous as a best friend that this is how logos will go in the future and he helped create it. It is so cool. It’s so awesome.”
Taylor and his long-time agent, Jordan Snowie of Wasserman, knew the change to the logo was coming. However, Taylor admits he did not know about the video until he saw it on X, formerly known as Twitter. At some point when he was talking to his wife, Andie, after the win in June he finally watched highlights on social media of both Jim Nantz’s television call (“Glorious! And free!”) and play-by-play broadcaster — and fellow Canadian — Mark Zecchino’s even more emotional call of the moment on PGA Tour Radio. Zecchino’s audio was included in the animated video that revealed the logo’s tweak.
“To have a Canadian call a Canadian moment like that and to circle it back into the logo is the coolest [expletive] thing ever,” Dahmen says. “To watch your best friend do something like that? Make history? One of the top moments in sports this year? It’s amazing.”
Taylor, to his credit, is doing his best to temper his expectations as he wraps up his 2023 campaign. He, along with partner Ruoning Yin of China (he shares a short-game coach with Yin, who reached No. 1 in the world on the women’s side this fall) finished eighth at the Grant Thornton. Taylor had six top-10s this season on the PGA Tour, seven if you count the team event. He was 52nd this year in strokes gained: putting — a leaps-and-bounds improvement from being 137th in the same stat in 2022. Taylor credits Canadian-Irish short-game guru Gareth Raflewski with his newfound success on the greens.
He nearly took down world No.1 Scottie Scheffler at the WM Phoenix Open in February but ended up second after falling just short in the final round. Taylor and Adam Hadwin finished second together as a team at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
But with some big opportunities coming up in 2024, Taylor says he’ll try to stay with the same process-oriented goals as this year. When he’s had success in the past, he hasn’t done a great job in limiting the pressure he puts on himself.
“When I’ve had high expectations my attitude has probably not been great when I haven’t had success. I have goals for next year […] and what I did really well the past year was have process goals that were brought down to the daily routines and if I keep doing that my good golf game will follow,” Taylor explains.
He's quick to nail some specifics, though. Taylor wants to represent Canada at the Olympics in Paris (at 35, he knows this may be his only chance) and play for Mike Weir’s International Team at the Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal.
“Weirsy being captain in Royal Montreal? It doesn’t get any better than that,” Taylor admits.
The native of Abbotsford, B.C. was a can’t-miss prospect growing up, even reaching No.1 in the world as an amateur for 20 weeks. He was runner-up at the 2008 NCAA Division I men’s golf championship and then finished as low amateur at the U.S. Open in 2009 en route to topping the amateur ranking that same year. Taylor broke through for his first PGA Tour title in 2014 at the Sanderson Farms Championship, but that was his lone top-10 of the season in 28 events. The next win came at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am in 2020, but that was one of just two top-10s that year.
Dahmen, who was roommates with Taylor while at the University of Washington and whose family lives close to Taylor’s place in Arizona, says this year was “finally” the one for his long-time pal. As in, Taylor finally did what everyone had long expected him to do.
“He had moments of brilliance but then years of lulls, but I think he put it together (this year). I’ve seen the hard work he puts in. I’ve watched what he’s done and who he’s talked to. I may be poaching some of his people,” Dahmen says with a laugh. “It inspires me to get better. We’re elder age on Tour but there’s a lot of game left.
“Nick’s always been this good, but to watch him have the year we always thought he would and then have multiple of those […] It’s a building block and I think he’s going to be great. I don’t think there is going to be a letdown.”
The videoof the putt is just a few minutes long, and the stroke itself takes up the first 12 seconds or so. Taylor’s still blown away by the crowd and the energy and all that happened then and after. He laughs at an oft-repeated story of how he and his (very) small entourage pulled out of the drive-thru of McDonalds near Oakdale so Taylor could take a call from Wayne Gretzky. He got a text from Bobby Orr after his win and met Orr himself in Naples earlier this month.
Taylor is humble and humbled by it all. A father of two, he keeps life simple. He earned this because of his golfing prowess and providing Canada with one of its most electric sporting moments, maybe ever. Whether or not the logo stays or goes, it’ll be a special week in 2024, looking back to everything that happened with his win in 2023.
“I probably haven’t fully grasped what it’s meant to a lot of people,” Taylor says. “Even a month after it happened, Andie and I were reminded of it and we’ll look at each other and be like, ‘so that actually happened, right?’”
It very much did. The putt and all that followed was some main-character energy.
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