The Great Catalonian Switcheroo

TEG 18 | Catalonia, Spain | 2025

Picture Alex Baker, on the 18th tee of the PGA Catalunya Tour course in the second round, writing 11 on his card at the par-5 home hole. A sextuple bogey. He has just authored a 106, the worst gross score across 22 prior TEG visits to the venue. His Trophy lead, which began the day at 12 points, narrows by exactly one. He wins the Trophy by 8.

This is the kind of trip Catalonia turned out to be. On TEG’s fourth visit to the region — fifth and sixth rounds at the Tour course, sixth and seventh at the Stadium — every reigning title-holder swapped seats with the man who held the opposite pot. The defending Trophy champion collected the Wooden Spoon. The reigning Wooden Spooner won the Green Jacket. And Alex Baker, who arrived with three prior Spoons on his mantelpiece and Spoons in two of the last three TEGs, calmly won the Trophy from the front. The Stableford forgives almost everything. The gross does not.

The Trophy: A Catalogue, A Coronation

Alex Baker took outright Trophy lead with a Stableford burst at the 5th hole of the opening round and was not headed again across the remaining 67 holes of the tournament. The lead, round by round, ran 12, 11, 12, 8. Final score: 169 points. Eight clear of John Patterson.

The card it was built on must be seen to be believed. Inside those four rounds Alex authored a 7, three 8s, two 9s, a 10 and an 11. R1 already included a quadruple 7 at the par-3 2nd, the easiest hole on the course, and a quadruple 9 at the par-5 18th. He led the field by 12 anyway, on 46 points, having banked 17 across holes 8–12 and another 13 across 14–16 with a birdie at the par-5 15th.

R2 doubled down. A quintuple-bogey 8 at the par-3 16th. The 11 at the 18th. The 106, a new Tour course-worst across 22 TEG visits.

His advantage shrank by a single point.

This is the bit you have to keep saying out loud. He scored 106 and his margin shrank by a single point.

The loudest statement came on the Stadium in R3, after he bled 12 shots across holes 6–10. From the 11th tee he played par, bogey, par, par, bogey, bogey: 21 points across six holes, restoring the cushion to 12. R4 brought a sextuple 10 at the par-4 14th, SI 4, and a quadruple 8 at the 17th. None of it mattered. Stableford zeroes the blanks and the points keep stacking elsewhere.

A man arrives with three Spoons on the shelf, plays the worst gross round in the venue’s TEG history, and walks off with the Trophy. There is no moral. Only a scorecard.

The Jacket: Spoon to Jacket in Twelve Months

Gregg Williams arrived holding the Wooden Spoon from TEG 17 and left holding the Green Jacket, finishing on +66 gross, 14 clear of David Mullin. The sixth-largest Jacket margin TEG has recorded.

He did not announce himself. Through R1 he sat third, having quadrupled the par-5 7th and the par-4 17th, with only a salvage birdie at the par-5 15th to show for the chasing. In R2 he climbed to second, two behind Jon Baker, banking 13 points across holes 13–16 with four consecutive pars.

The Jacket turned on the par-4 2nd at the Stadium in R3. Williams parred it. The card around it read par, par, par, par across holes 2–5: 12 points, a four-hole opening burst that took him to outright lead. He never yielded it. By the close of R3 the margin was 8. By the end of R4 it was 14.

R4 carried the signature. Williams matched Mullin’s 84 from the round before, his Stadium personal best by eight shots and eight shots better than his last visit to the course. From Spoon holder to Jacket holder, on the same hillside where his successor in the Spoon was being demoted beside him.

The Spoon: A Defending Champion, Demoted

Jon Baker won the Trophy at TEG 17. He arrived in Catalonia as the man to beat, and the early returns suggested he might be. He led the Jacket race after R1, by 2; he still led it after R2, by 2 again. Then in R3, on the par-4 2nd at the Stadium — the same hole at which Williams was taking outright Jacket lead at very nearly the same moment — Jon triple-bogeyed.

He dropped to last. He did not climb off it.

R3 was his unmaking. The triple at the 2nd, a quintuple-bogey 9 at the par-4 4th, the slow accumulation of a card the Stableford could not bail out because the field around him was now stacking points. R4 sealed the receipt: five consecutive doubles across holes 7–11, taking in the par-5 7th, the par-3 8th, the par-4 9th at SI 1, the 10th and the par-3 11th. Ten shots in five holes. A birdie at the 13th briefly halted the bleeding. He finished bottom in three of the four rounds and, on 126 points, bottom of the tournament.

Trophy holder to Spoon-holder inside twelve months. Catalonia kept the receipts.

The Stadium Day

R3 was the hinge. Two decisive moments of the tournament happened on the same hole within minutes of each other — Williams to lead, Jon Baker to last — and then David Mullin sat down and wrote the round of the trip.

Mullin’s 84 at the Stadium beat the prior TEG record of 89, set across 27 previous visits. It was his personal best there by seven shots. He banked 10 points across holes 8–10 with a birdie at the par-4 10th, and shot the lowest gross round any TEG player has produced on the course. He finished Jacket runner-up by 14, a standing that does not capture what he did on Monday so much as what he did everywhere else, including a sextuple 11 at the par-5 15th in R1 and an R2 ten shots worse than his last Tour visit.

The following round Williams matched the 84. The course record stood for one night.

Standings by round

End of Round 1

Trophy Standings: AB 46 | JP 34 | DM 32 | GW 31 | JB 30

Green Jacket Standings: JB +24 | AB +26 | GW +27 | DM +28 | JP +30

End of Round 2

Trophy Standings: AB 87 | JP 76 | GW 73 | JB 69 | DM 67

Green Jacket Standings: JB +39 | GW +41 | DM +50 | JP +52 | AB +60

End of Round 3

Trophy Standings: AB 131 | JP 119 | GW 116 | DM 111 | JB 97

Green Jacket Standings: GW +54 | DM +62 | JB +67 | JP +73 | AB +88

End of Round 4

Trophy Standings: AB 169 | JP 161 | GW 160 | DM 149 | JB 126

Green Jacket Standings: GW +66 | DM +80 | JB +92 | JP +95 | AB +124

The men, in brief

• Alex Baker — The serial Spooner, crowned. Took outright Trophy lead at the 5th hole of the tournament and held it through 67 more, despite a card that included a 7, three 8s, two 9s, a 10, an 11 and the new Tour course-worst of 106. Eight points clear at the close. The Stableford forgives.
• Gregg Williams — Spoon to Jacket inside twelve months. Patient through two rounds, decisive at R3 H2, signed off with an 84 at the Stadium that improved his personal best there by eight. Final margin 14, sixth-largest in TEG history.
• Jon Baker — Trophy champion last May, Wooden Spooner in Catalonia. Led the Jacket after both opening rounds, triple-bogeyed himself to last at the par-4 2nd in R3, and confirmed the position with five straight doubles across holes 7–11 in R4. 126 points; bottom in three rounds of four.
• David Mullin — Wrote the lowest round TEG has ever recorded at the Stadium, an 84 that beat the previous course record by five, and still finished Jacket runner-up by 14. R1’s 11 at the par-5 15th and an R2 ten shots adrift of his last Tour visit were the passages that kept him at arm’s length.
• John Patterson — Quiet Trophy runner-up at 161, eight back. Personal bests at both PGA Catalunya courses, 94 at the Tour and 93 at the Stadium. Bled 22 shots across holes 3–10 in R1 and another 11 across 6–10 in R2 — but unlike the front-runners, contained the worst to two passages of the trip.

Personal bests and TEG records