ORLANDO, Fla. — You don’t know Keith Mitchell, and that’s OK.
You may or may not get to know him a little bit more depending on his results going forward, beginning with this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.
For the uninitiated, Mitchell is the no-name mini-tour journeyman who captured the Honda Classic on Sunday, staving off reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year Brooks Koepka, who won both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in 2018, and Rickie Fowler in the cauldron of back-nine pressure.
For the 27-year-old Mitchell, it was his first career PGA Tour win, and it was a life-changing moment for a guy whose only previous professional win came three years ago on something called the G Pro Tour and put $5,600 into his bank account.
For the Honda Classic win, Mitchell won $1.224 million, got a 2 ¹/₂ -year exemption on the PGA Tour and is now qualified for all four major championships beginning with the Masters in April.
Those are some serious fringe benefits for a player who was ranked 162nd in the world a week ago and never even won a collegiate event while playing at Georgia.
And this is the beauty of that: None of those life-altering benefits is what Mitchell said he cherished most about burying his tournament-winning 15-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole at PGA National.
“That’s so cool to think about all the doors that have been opened for me after winning,’’ Mitchell said Tuesday. “But the best thing about winning was the feeling from the time that putt went in the hole and the time I got it out of the hole. That 15 or 20 seconds is the feeling that every single player on the PGA Tour is out here for. You can say you’re out here for all these different things and the fame and the fortune and everything, but I learned after winning that the coolest part about it is that raw emotion from the time the ball goes in the hole until the time you got it out.
“People kept bringing up, ‘Oh, you got this, you got this.’ All that’s great, but every time I think about what I got out of winning, it was that feeling for those 15 seconds.’’
Those 15 seconds, though, did not turn into fame for Mitchell, whom NBC’s Dan Hicks, during the telecast, inadvertently referred to as “Kevin’’ Mitchell (the former Mets and Giants baseball player).
Mitchell had some fun with that on Twitter afterward, tweeting: “You can call me Kevin all you want. Just make the check out to Keith.’’
The day after Mitchell’s win, the Palm Beach Post ran this headline across its front sports page over a picture of him holding the trophy: “NO-NAME CHAMPION.’’
There was such negative fallout for the insult to Mitchell that the newspaper’s sports editor wrote a 713-word story apologizing for it.
Mitchell, however, sounded completely unaffected by it. He sounded, in fact, buoyed by it.
“That part of this story is an important part because that’s what helped me play well on the weekend and so I think it’s kind of cool that it ended up happening that way,’’ Mitchell said. “It was definitely a part of me winning. Hopefully, one day my name might be on the headline and it will be familiar. The context that it was written, it sounds like was in good light and that’s all that matters. I’ve probably said things a hundred times that came off the wrong way.’’
Since his win, Mitchell has said all the right things, touched every humble note. Of the $1.224 million windfall from Honda, he said, “It’s such a large number it’s hard to fathom, but I’m just thankful that so many people get a part of that — like my caddie gets a part of that, my coach gets a part of that, my management team that’s been so helpful gets a part of that. It’s so great to have to share with all the people that have helped me get to that point [because] I could not win that tournament and earn that check by myself.’’
Mitchell, who spent the better part of Monday returning more than 1,000 texts he received after winning, conceded Tuesday that “it’s going to be hard to refocus’’ this week after such an emotional run Sunday.
“Every year a no-name guy wins,’’ Mitchell said. “That’s what makes the PGA Tour so difficult. You watch other sports and you almost know what the outcome’s going to be and you hope for a good match. Last week, we had a great match and it was with two heavyweights [Koepka and Fowler] and I guess I was the underdog. It’s fun being that guy sometimes. It’s really fun when you win.’’