It’s just a matter of time before Russell Henley wins a major championship.
When Henley gets on a heater, like he did at the end of last week’s Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial, he’s tough to stop. He finished his round with three straight birdies to get into a playoff, then knocked his approach to six feet and made the birdie putt to win his sixth PGA tour event.
“I’ve been playing really well the last three or four years, or even more, really,” Henley said. “And even though I’ve been playing well, I still feel like I keep coming back to this realization that it’s just so hard. So to get to win out here and to play consistently well, it takes everything out of me. I mean, I feel like mentally I can’t take one shot off, I can’t take a practice day off. I need to be locked in every part of my game and just, it just has to be a hundred percent every day. The older I’ve gotten, the more I realize how much work it takes, how hard it is. And I’ve also, you know, the longer I play the more bad shots I hit, too, so you kind of have those in the back of your mind too. I mean, like, man, I don’t want to do that again. So there’s just the mental grind of it as well. So just each time I’ve gotten over the finish line and gotten a win it’s just very special for just because I realize each time it’s just very difficult.”
Henley, 37, has shown he can play well under the spotlight. He held his own last year at The Tour Championship, tying for second, and tied for third at the Masters.
Henley missed the cut at the PGA Championship, but had finished among the top-10 in the three previous majors – T3 at Masters, T10 at U.S. Open and Open Championship.
It’s just a matter of time before he wins a big one.
