European Ryder Cup Captain Luke Donald was in the Crescent City to play in the Zurich Classic.
He would miss the cut playing with teammate Camillo Villegas, but that was the bad news.
The good news Donald may have found another pairing for Europe.
What may have seemed obvious pairing the brothers Hojgaard together, that was validated on Sunday when the Danish twins finished runner-up to Ben Griffin and Andrew Novak.
What was impressive was not on the 13-under 59 in the opening round best-ball, but the Sunday final round 4-under 68.
“It’s an important week for us, we can build a lot and there’s a lot of positives from this week,” Nicoli said. “I feel like we played some good golf for the most part and still can see where our games need a bit of fine tuning. But it was a week where we could free up a little bit and try and really help each other, and we had so much fun.”
In a week when most of the presumptive U.S. Ryder Cup team was off, the Hojgaard’s, who have been playing with and against each other since they were kids had an opportunity to experience a team event in a high leverage situation and more importantly know they need to work on somethings, which has to be for a bigger event in September.
“I think all week we’ve had a good vibe in our little group, us two and our two caddies,” Rasmus said. “Yeah, there’s been good energy right from the start, and obviously we got off to building from there, and I think we did that well putting ourselves in contention. We did our best today and we can keep our head high.”
Not to slight the recent Masters winner, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry was in the field as well.
The defending champions didn’t successfully defend, but considering most people didn’t believe McIlroy was even going to show up, they acquitted themselves well.
The eventually T12 had some positives, with a 61 in the third round and the duo having a legitimate chance to defend, if they had a impactful Sunday final round, which they didn’t.
“It was nice to come and try and defend, I think we did a good job for the most part.,” Lowry said. “I think we played all right, just today nothing really happened for us, and then after the delay we just went — everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I had a great week. I’m happy my man came here this week, and we had a great time, and it was fun.”
And if you’re Donald, you must be encouraged with seeing the brothers Hojgaard playing so well as a team and seeing McIlroy and Lowry make an appearance and get some additional experience together.
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Related: The Brothers Højgaard Shoot 59 at the Zurich Classic
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