If you didn’t know any better, PGA Tour veteran Ben Crane could have been one of the passengers on the TV show Manifest, where the passengers and crew of a commercial airliner suddenly reappear after being presumed dead for five and a half years.
After all, the 46-year-old Oregon Duck grad won five times on the PGA Tour, but hasn’t finished inside the top 125 to make the FedEx Cup since 2016. His last top-10 finish? The 2019 Puerto Rico Open. Has the five-time Tour winner with over $21 million in earnings been lost in the Bermuda Triangle? This week, his game has been found there. On Friday, Crane tied a career-low with a bogey-free 9-under 62 at Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton, Bermuda, to take the 36-hole lead at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.
“I mean, couldn’t be more encouraged,” Crane said after shooting a two-day total of 14-under 128, a stroke better than five golfers. “Obviously played the best golf I’ve played in a long time and to be in this tournament is super encouraging, get to play four rounds.”
Butterfield Bermuda: Leaderboard | Photos
Crane wasn’t even in the field on Sunday, still stuck on the alternate list but called a friend involved in the tournament and said he was going to fly to Bermuda and take his chances.
“He said, ‘Hey, we got you, we took you as a sponsor exempt into the field,’ ” Crane recalled. “I don’t get in a lot and then to get in and the weather starts getting bad right when I finished. So really cool to shoot 62. That 29 on the back, I didn’t see it coming, but it adds up to 29, super fun day.”
Crane also bagged the shot of the day according to Golf Channel, holing a 51-degree wedge from 115 yards for eagle from the sixth fairway.
Ben Crane made an EAGLE from 115 yards out en route to a Friday 62 at the @Bermuda_Champ.
: Golf Channel and @peacock pic.twitter.com/7KYwRJ5Sc1
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) October 28, 2022
“Sometimes you kind of picture them, you look up and it’s, man, that’s just like I pictured it, lined up with the pin, landed a few paces passed the hole, spun back and went in,” said Crane, who punched the sky and kicked up his right foot. “I was having an incredible day and then that happened. I was like, wow, this is all going my way.”
Crane, who last won in 2014 and played in just 10 events last year as a past champion, discussed how easily it is to lose one’s game.
“It’s just one little slipped shot here or there and you lose your confidence,” he explained. “I said it to my son who’s 14 and learning to play the game, it’s a really hard game, golf’s hard. Today was one of those special days, one of a hundred whatever it is where it just kind of all comes together.”
For Crane, it added up to his first lead at a Tour event since 2017.