The saying is, a golf tournament doesn’t begin until the back nine on Sunday. 

The Arnold Palmer Invitational proved that to be true—and all it took was one swing for the lead to change. 

Seventy holes into the tournament, Collin Morikawa saw his once three-stroke lead shrink to one. Then, on the par-5 16th, Russell Henley chipped in from 54 feet for eagle, turning a one-stroke deficit into a one-stroke advantage. 

One he wouldn’t relinquish. 

MORE: Final results, payouts from the Arnold Palmer Invitational

With a par on the 72nd hole, the 35-year-old capped off a final-round 70 for his fifth PGA Tour win and his first since the 2022 World Wide Technology Championship. 

Morikawa held the 54-hole lead by one stroke over Henley. He got off to a fast start with a hole-out birdie from the greenside bunker on his first hole Sunday, but bogeys on Nos. 10 and 14 proved to be costly. Henley, meanwhile, birdied No. 14, staying on Morikawa’s tail until he finally jumped to the top of the leaderboard with his eagle on No. 16. 

Morikawa, a two-time major champion, was looking for his first win since the 2023 Zozo Championship—and his first victory outside the PGA Tour fall series since hoisting the Claret Jug in 2021. 

The 28-year-old was 1 for 4 in converting 54-hole leads to wins. One of those was the 2023 Sentry, when he fumbled a six-stroke 54-hole lead, tied for the largest collapse in Tour history. 

At Arnie’s Place, though, he kept himself in position with a final-round 72, but it wasn’t enough to put Henley away. 

Instead, Henley has the biggest win of his career—and arguably its signature moment, too.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as With Late Chip-in Eagle, Russell Henley Steals Arnold Palmer Invitational.