<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
It was almost a month ago that Long Beach Wilson grad John Merrick took sixth at the Masters, the highest finish of his young career—now, another Long Beach product (this one a Long Beach State 49er) has finished strong, as John Mallinger took third place at this weekend’s Players Championship.<\/p>\n
\n
The third place finish was his highest this season, and tied his career best—he’s finished in third six times now since joining the tour in 2005. “For some reason I can’t get off these third place finishes,” Mallinger said in a PGA interview. <\/span>“I think I have six of them. But when you’re playing against a field like this, you’re playing against the best players in the world. When you compete at that level and you perform well and you execute coming down, I think that’s the big thing.”<\/p>\n For his time, he won $551,000, as he moves up the top 100 earners list. <\/span>He shot a -2 on the day to finish at -7, five strokes off the lead and one stroke off of second place.<\/p>\n Merrick finished at +7 after shooting that score on Sunday, tying him for 66th near the bottom of the leaderboard. <\/span>He still made nearly $20,000, which isn’t too bad for a weekend playing golf. <\/span>Paul Goydos, Wilson and Long Beach State grad and last year’s Players Championship hero, missed the weekend cut. <\/p>\n Mallinger was happy with his performance, and already looking forward to 2010. “I feel comfortable out here,” he said. <\/span>“I always have. I haven’t had many good finishes, but for some reason none of the holes bothered me. I’m definitely looking forward to coming back next year.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The former 49er shot a two-under to move up the leaderboard to third place on the final day of competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}