Michael Brennan and Asterisk Talley Turn Hard Lessons Into Winning Sundays

In this week’s “The Starter,” Michael Brennan turns two difficult Sundays into a Wyndham Championship victory that carries him into the FedExCup Playoffs, while Asterisk Talley converts a series of major amateur near-misses into a U.S. Women’s Amateur title. Their stages, ages and competitive circumstances were different, but the week produced the same answer in two places: Previous failure can become useful when another chance arrives.

Michael Brennan Changes His Season at Sedgefield

Brennan began the Wyndham Championship at No. 105 in the FedExCup standings, far enough outside the top 70 that a good week alone would not save his season. He needed a finish of approximately second or better, and he entered Sunday tied for the lead with Beau Hossler. The position was promising. The recent evidence, however, suggested that closing the job would be the hardest part.

Brennan had been in position on each of the previous two Sundays. A final-round 74 at the 3M Open dropped him outside the top 20, and a 73 in the final group at the Rocket Classic left him tied for 15th. At the Wyndham, he fell one behind Hossler early. Then he made five straight birdies from Nos. 4 through 8, each from inside 8 feet, and turned the deficit into a three-shot lead by the time Hossler bogeyed the ninth.

There was no comparable retreat this time. Brennan closed with a 6-under 64 and birdied the 18th to finish at 22-under 258, matching the tournament scoring record. The five-stroke win was the second PGA Tour title for the 24-year-old Virginia native and moved him from No. 105 to No. 47 in the FedExCup standings. His season was not merely extended. It was redirected toward Memphis with a place in the Masters waiting in 2027.

Brennan was the only player to cross the playoff line at the Wyndham, which underscores how little room existed at the bottom of the top 70. Jackson Koivun, who left Auburn in June and won the 3M Open in his third professional start, closed with a 71 and held the final position by eight points. Steven Fisk, who missed the cut after entering the week at No. 69, slipped to No. 71. One player’s five-day surge displaced another player who did not reach the weekend.

The final leaderboard also offered two reminders about how quickly careers can tilt. Hossler shared the 54-hole lead and finished second, yet he needed a victory to reach the postseason. Ben James, already assured of PGA Tour status for 2027 as the top player in the PGA Tour University ranking, shot a final-round 61 to finish third. For Hossler, an excellent week still ended a season. For James, one electric round became another sign that his transition is moving faster than most.

Asterisk Talley Finishes a Long Pursuit

Talley’s 8-and-6 victory over Anna Iwanaga at The Honors Course was decisive, but the result makes more sense when viewed against everything that came before it. The 17-year-old from Chowchilla, California, had finished second in the 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 2024 U.S. Girls’ Junior, then fell just short again at the 2025 Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Those were not distant disappointments from another stage of her career. They were the immediate history she carried into the USGA’s oldest women’s championship.

This time, Talley did not merely reach another final. She controlled it. She played the morning 18 in 6 under, made seven birdies and took a 3-up lead into the break. A birdie on the 19th hole pushed the advantage to four, and after another weather delay, she won the 23rd and 24th holes before chipping in for birdie at the 25th. One hole later, the Robert Cox Trophy was hers.

The clean final score concealed how disorderly the week had been. Dangerous weather interrupted play on five consecutive days, and Talley played 39 holes on Saturday while finishing the Round of 16, surviving Maggie Ma in 19 holes and beginning her semifinal against Lily Peng. She needed only 108 holes to win six matches, tied for the fifth-fewest in championship history, but efficiency did not make the physical and mental demand any less real. It simply showed how well she handled it.

Talley had already won a USGA title with Sarah Lim at the 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball. This one occupied a different place in her career. She became the first player since Amanda Blumenherst in 2008 to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur one year after finishing second, and the victory brought exemptions into the next 10 editions of the championship and the 2027 U.S. Women’s Open at Inverness Club. “This pretty much completes my amateur career,” Talley said. At 17, that statement sounds unusually large. Her record makes it understandable.

Iwanaga’s week deserves to survive beyond the final margin. The 17-year-old from Japan earned the No. 1 seed in stroke play and made it through a weather-disrupted bracket to the 36-hole final. Her runner-up finish secured a three-year U.S. Women’s Amateur exemption and a place in the 2027 U.S. Women’s Open, provided she remains an amateur. Talley supplied the ending, but Iwanaga helped establish the level required to reach it.

The Closing Thought

Golf often presents progress in the least convenient order. The difficult experience comes first, and its value is impossible to measure until the player is placed in a similar position again. Talley’s runner-up finishes did not guarantee a U.S. Women’s Amateur title, just as Brennan’s two poor Sundays did not guarantee a better third attempt. They only gave each player information that could be used.

That is what connected Ooltewah and Greensboro. Talley arrived at another championship match knowing exactly how much the opportunity could hurt. Brennan reached another final round knowing how quickly control could disappear. Neither erased what happened before. They made it part of what happened next.