Thomas Detry Finally Gets His, Internationals Dominating The PGA Tour, And The Waste Management's Brilliance
The Waste Management Phoenix Open delivered. In other news, water continues to be wet.
Every single year the Waste Management checks every box, but this time around the event especially stood out, which is saying something given that it didn't feature the strongest field possible and ultimately produced a runaway winner in Thomas Detry that many casual golf fans aren't exactly familiar with.
Detry put together one of the most impressive final-round performances in recent memory to earn his maiden win on the PGA Tour and has continued a trend that may have American golf fans on edge six events into the new season.
We'll dive into it all in this week's edition of Par Talk. As always, any thoughts, concerns, criticisms, or shop talk, feel free to shoot an email over to mark.harris@outkick.com and follow me on X @itismarkharris.
It's Been A Long Time Coming For Thomas Detry
While this week's WM Phoenix Open marked just his 68th start on the PGA Tour, Thomas Detry is a legitimate journeyman when it comes to professional golf around the world.
The Belgian, who resides most of the year in Dubai, has more than 160 starts over on the DP World Tour and has consistently hovered around the Top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking. He's been a familiar name on leaderboards around the world for nearly a decade, but surprisingly, had just one singular professional win, which came in 2016 on the Challenge Tour before his triumph in Scottsdale.
Thomas Detry is a prime representation of just how ridiculously hard it is to win a professional golf tournament, but did he ever seize his opportunity on Sunday.
Detry began the final round with a five-shot lead, but no lead is exactly comfortable when you're talking about a player searching for his first win in one of the biggest and rowdiest stages in all of golf. Add the fact that the likes of Jordan Spieth, Daniel Berger, Rasmus Hojgaard and others were within arm's length on the leaderboard, and you have a situation where Detry could have crumbled a bit and made things interesting, or painful in his case, in a hurry.
Instead, he goes out and shoots 1-under on the front and then slams the door shut in relentless fashion by making four straight birdies to close out his round and post a final round 65 for a seven-shot victory.
The first Belgian-born player to ever win on the PGA Tour, and that win happened to be by a whopping seven shots? Yeah, that'll do.
Detry had four Top 10 finishes in 2024 in what was just his second full-time season on the PGA Tour. Now that he's crossed the final hurdle, one of the more underrated well-rounded players in the game could find this winning gear more consistently.
International Players Having Their Moment To Begin New Season
We've got ourselves a trend to start the 2025 PGA Tour season that isn't exactly ideal from the perspective of Americans given the fact that it is a Ryder Cup year.
Of the six events played in 2025, five have been won by international players. Hideki Matsuyama (Japan), Nick Taylor (Canada), Sepp Straka (Austria), Rory McIlroy (Northern Ireland) and of course Detry of Belgium make up those five with Harris English being the lone American in the bunch with his win at the Farmers Insurance Open.
Four of the first six events last season were won by Americans, but 2023 had the exact same results we're seeing this year with five of the first six winners hailing from elsewhere. That 2023 season was capped off by one of the most embarrassing American Ryder Cup performances ever, with the Internationals dominating the red, white, and blue in Italy.
If you're a huge believer in trends or correlations, this season isn't exactly off to a pro-American start, in more ways than one.
The Waste Management Does It Again By Keeping Things Simple
It's very easy to get excited for the Waste Management Phoenix Open each year. We like big venues, we like seeing massive crowds (especially from the comfort of our own couch), and we like big-name winners and the Waste Management has routinely checked all three of those boxes year after year.
This year's event, however, was a little different. Only three Top 10 players in the world teed it up in the desert, and while World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler was among them, this marked just his second start of the year after his freak cooking accident delayed the start of his season.
There was juice, but the glass wasn't exactly filled to the brim like we've had it in years past.
The PGA Tour deserves all the credit in the world, however, as they kept the course fast and firm from start to finish with many greens resembling trampolines on occasion.
It's remarkable what a familiar venue, big crowds, and firm conditions can do for a tournament, even one that wasn't really all that close at any point on Sunday. Oh, and a full-field event with a cut doesn't hurt the cause either.
More of that, please.