Winners and losers from Memorial week

This past weekend saw a lot of great story lines and we are here to give you the good and the bad of it. Here are our winners and losers from the past week in golf.

Winners

Hideki Matsuyama — You hear plenty of young names tossed around as “the next big thing” these days. We’ve exhausted Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, and even batted around the idea of Ryo Ishikawa or Matteo Manassero becoming the net budding star. But it’s shortsighted to ignore the fact that the 22-year-old Matsuyama could be that guy, and his win on Sunday at the Memorial did more to support that claim. His final round 69 was made all the better with a clutch birdie on his 18th hole, the fourth straight time that Matusyama had birdied the last, and despite breaking his driver on the final hole of regulation, regrouped, hit three-wood off the tee in the playoff and eventually made and incredible up-and-down for par and the win. He finished in the top-10 twice at majors a year ago, and this win will only help his confidence as the PGA Tour gets set for three more in 2014.

Kevin Na — The 30-year-old is still searching for that second PGA Tour win, but his final round 64 was good enough to land him in a playoff and earn him an enormous check. Na now has two seconds and a third this season and sits 10th in the FedEx Cup standings.

Brendon Todd — The Byron Nelson champion has now gone win, T-5, T-8 in his last three starts. That’s not so shabby for a guy that had just two top-10s all season before the Texas swing.

Stacy Lewis — They might need to rename this ShopRite LPGA Classic the “Stacy Lewis Invitational” if she continues to do what she’s done at this event. Lewis won by six on Sunday, claiming her 10th career LPGA win and the No. 1 ranking from Inbee Park, who held the top spot for 59 weeks.

Losers

Bubba Watson — It looked like Bubba would cruise to his third PGA Tour win of 2014 on Sunday after his early birdies on Nos. 1 and 4, but that was about the end of the road for the Masters champion, who started missing fairways, missing greens and struggling on par-5s. Despite his shaky play in the middle of his Sunday round, it was still Bubba’s tournament to win when he got to the par-5 15th, a hole he had played 5-under for the week to that point including two eagles, but a double-bogey there all but ended his chances and three straight pars on his way in left him out of the playoff by a single shot. Bubba is now 2-for-9 when at least holding a share of the lead after 54 holes on the PGA Tour, so while he continues to get himself in that final group, it isn’t as easy for him to close on Sunday.

Adam Scott — Normally a man you find on the former part of this list, Scott looked like he might go back-to-back after Bubba started his struggles on Sunday at Muirfield Village. Scott was 5-under on his round after a birdie on the 11th and sat at 14-under for the tournament, which would have been good enough for a one-shot win if he could have just parred out, but Scott lost it on his way in. His poor swing on the 12th found the water, but it was his three bogey stretch on 14, 15 and 16 that doomed his chances and left him three shots out of a playoff that looked like he would definitely make before he got to No. 12.

Scott Langley — The other left-hander in the final group next to Bubba was Langley, but you probably didn’t see much of him on the Sunday telecast as the 25-year-old posted a final round 79 to drop all the way to a T-28th. At least this birdie putt dropped for his lone highlight of the day.

Rory McIlroy — It’s pretty incredible to think that Rory, coming off a huge win last week in England, would open with an electrifying 63 and still not finish in the top-10, but that’s what McIlroy did this week after Thursday. His three straight double-bogeys on Friday were strange enough, but Rory could never find any consistency after that opening round, having stretches of great play the rest of the week but sprinkling in too many bogeys to give himself a legit chance of making up for that horrid opening nine 43 on Friday.

Devil Ball Golf – Golf – Yahoo Sports