PGA Tour

Farmington • Taylor Pendrith played some of the best golf of his life for three rounds. Proven winner Patrick Cantlay made a Sunday charge. Yet as it turned out, the only person who could have stopped Tony Finau from winning consecutive PGA Tour events was his wife.

Alayna Finau had packed up the couple’s five children and gone home to Lehi after the family witnessed Finau’s July 24 win in the 3M Open in Minnesota. She suggested that her husband withdraw from the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit and enjoy the victory with them.

He stuck to his schedule.

“It’s OK,” he assured her. “When I come home, I’ll have two wins.”

Sure enough, as Finau stood on the driving range of Oakridge Country Club this week, two trophies were displayed as he hosted the Tony Finau Foundation Golf Classic. The annual pro-am event, aligned with the Korn Ferry Tour’s Utah Championship, became a double-victory celebration for Finau, a West High School graduate.

Snapshots of the clinic he helped conduct in advance of the pro-am will be lasting images.

Here’s Finau, pausing for 15 seconds before managing to continue his welcoming speech, amid thoughts of Vena Finau, who died in 2011. “There’s always a special person in my life that’s never able to be here to enjoy the success,” he said. “That’s my mom.”

Here’s Finau, who as a child was happy to drive the ball over a hill that stood 90 yards from the No. 1 tee on the Jordan River Par-3 that’s now a disc golf course in his old Rose Park neighborhood, blasting the ball 367 yards in the air, as tracked by a high-tech monitor.

Here’s his 10-year-old son, Jraice, confidently launching 260-yard drives, evoking scenes of Tony and his younger brother, Gipper, from similar showcases in the early 2000s.

Here’s another son, Tony Jr., 7, using a cross-handed grip and a chopping swing, topping shots that roll a few yards. Next to him is Kington Finau, the 8-year-old son of Finau’s father, Kelepi, who’s remarried. Kington is swinging sweetly, lacing shots into a net.

So it’s nurture, after all. As Finau has said, “It’s not a natural thing to swing a golf club.”

Still, Finau keeps improving, thanks to the drive that PGA Tour star Justin Thomas admires about him. The rewards came in a late-July torrent in the Upper Midwest.

“I say…