It’s not uncommon these days to see tears of joy from the winner of a PGA Tour event, but if anyone deserved a good cry, it was Bud Cauley after his long-awaited victory Sunday in the RBC Canadian Open.
Battling back from the golfing wilderness is something plenty of players endure, but Cauley had to fight hard for a number of years just to get back to the wilderness. Cauley’s two-stroke win over fast-closing Matt Fitzpatrick in Caledon, Ontario, was the culmination of rebuilding his game to the highest level after doctors finally rebuilt his body sufficiently to pursue the career he always dreamed of having.
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“I hit a lot of good shots. I made a lot of good putts. I got a great break on 16 which was nice. I don’t know, I’m just very proud of the way I kind of kept going and continued to make birdies there on the back nine and I’m just, I’m so happy,” said Cauley, who essentially won the tournament with four birdies in a five-hole stretch on the final nine holes to card a five-under 65 on the North Course at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley.
Cauley, 36, won in his 239th career start on the PGA Tour and 15 years after he turned pro following three years as a first-team All-American at the University of Alabama. It also came almost eight years to the day he nearly died in a one-car crash in Dublin, Ohio, following the second round of the 2018 Memorial Tournament.
It was June 1 that year when Cauley went to a nearby pub with former NHL player James Wisniewski and two other Columbus area acquaintances. One of those men, a local surgeon named David Crawford, was driving and lost control of his car about a mile from Muirfield Village Golf Club. The car struck a driveway culvert, went airborne, hit a number of trees and came to rest in a ditch. Seated in the rear passenger seat, Cauley was most seriously injured because the car struck the tree on passenger side, crumpling the door. Cauley suffered a concussion, six broken ribs on his right side, a punctured lung and a broken left leg.
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Miraculously, he returned to competitive golf in September, but after playing in the season-opening Safeway Open in 2020, he had to step away to address lingering soreness in his ribcage. Thus began an odyssey of surgeries and complications that sidelined him for 3 1/2 years, until the 2024 WM Phoenix Open.
“It’s hard to put into words how much you miss something when you grow up doing it every day and you play golf every day, and then it gets taken away, it does change your perspective,” the Florida native said upon his return.
But the adversity didn’t change his desire or his belief in his abilities.
“There were times when I was hurt that we really weren’t sure if I was going to be able to play again,” Cauley confessed. “So there were moments and conversations that [wife] Kristi and I had where we didn’t know if it was going to work out. Once I was able to start playing again and I felt more comfortable with my body and it holding up —I’ve always believed in my ability to play golf and play the game and be competitive. I knew I could win, but I also knew that I needed to prove it to myself and go out and do it.”
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After finishing 47th last year in the FedEx Cup standings, thereby qualifying for all the signature events in 2026, Cauley was enduring an uneven season until he arrived in Canada. He was one of six players tied for seventh after a second-round 63 and he entered the final round just a stroke behind 54-hole leader Jackson Suber, another non-winner. In fact, as the leaders made the turn, the trio of Cauley, Suber and Jimmy Stanger shared the lead at 14 under. Stanger not only hadn’t won, either, but was playing on his second-last start off a major medical following 2024 elbow surgery that kept him off the tour in 2025.
With temperatures barely reaching 60 and rain falling intermittently throughout the day, competitors played preferred lies, but Cauley didn’t need the help in separating himself from the pack of more seasoned contenders including Fitzpatrick, Sam Burns, Viktor Hovland and Tommy Fleetwood.
Cauley used the slope of the green to send his tee shot at the par-3 11th to within four feet of the pin, and he knocked it in to re-establish a tie with Suber at 15 under after Suber birdied the 10th. Then came the first of two holes Cauley played poorly—and which won him the title and $1.764 million.
He found trouble left of the fairway in tall fescue and could only hack it out short and right of the green. He then chopped out his third expertly, and that’s no exaggeration. His ball found the cup, and so did birdie putts at 13 and 15 to widen his lead to four shots.
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Another poor drive at the par-4 16th, this one way right, was going to make par difficult, but destiny would not forsake him. His ball caromed off a moving golf cart, and instead of ending up in a wooded area, the ball settled in the rough, leading to a routine par. “Obviously, those good breaks went a long way for me today,” said Cauley, whose rose from 68th to 40th in the world rankings.
A bogey at 17 hardly mattered as he finished with a tap-in par at 18 for 17-under 263. A three-time winner this year, Fitzpatrick eagled the last to make to look close, his 64 giving him a 265 total. Hovland, after a 65, was another stroke back in third, while Suber, who shot 70, fell back into a tie for fourth. Cauley, Suber and Jesper Svensson, who also tied for fourth, earned spots in the 154th Open at Royal Birkdale through the Open Qualifying Series.
When it was over, Cauley let the tears he had been fighting back flow more freely. There were no fist pumps or shouts of joy, just a hug with his caddie, Matthew Hauser, and then a longer embrace with his wife Kristi and their two young sons, Cooper and Miles.
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Cauley began playing golf when he was 6. He figures it wasn’t long after that he already was thinking about being a professional and winning a tournament. Thirty years is a long time to wait. So, of course, the emotions were going to pour out of him.
“Yeah, that’s a moment I’ve thought a lot about,” he said of that final winning stroke. “Even last year a couple times when I was in contention my family wasn’t with me and it would always kind of cross my mind that hopefully for my first win everyone would be here. I had to try to not think about it a lot today. Obviously with them being here and I was playing well, I really had to think almost on every hole about staying focused and not thinking about that celebration if I were to win.
“I hit that putt up there [on 18] to a few inches, and I kind of stood on the front of the green, and I looked over and saw Kristi, Cooper, and Miles standing there, and I started to tear up. I tried to look down. I had a short putt, but I was trying and couldn’t see, and so I thought I needed to clear my eyes before I could go up there and tap in.”
Well, he had maintained and nurtured a clear-eyed vision of that triumphant moment for years. He can be forgiven for faltering a little when it finally arrived.
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