Kitayama's 63 at PGA Championship ties lowest Sunday mark - ESPN

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Kurt Kitayama tied the lowest final round in major championship history with a 7-under 63 on Sunday at the PGA Championship.

Kitayama, in the fourth group off in the morning, charged up the leaderboard with the lowest score of this championship at the par-70 Aronimink Golf Club midway through the final round. He became the ninth player with a 63 in the final round and second in PGA Championship history.

The record for majors is 62 done five times, most recently by Shane Lowry and Xander Schauffele in the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla.

The 5-foot-7 Kitayama, an accomplished basketball player from California who led Chico High School to a pair of section titles and earned the nickname «Quadzilla» for his large legs, averaged 313 yards off the tee in the championship. But, it was his work on the greens that helped him challenge the major records.

Kitayama credited the «putter God» for his bogey-free round in which he used 28 swings with the flat stick to make more than 141 feet of putts.

Kurt Kitayama on Sunday became just the ninth golfer to shoot a 63 in the final round of a major championship.

«I felt like I was holding the world out there,» said Kitayama, 33, whose two PGA Tour titles include the Arnold Palmer Invitational. «What my eye saw, that's what the ball was doing. And that's a good feeling.»

The Californian started quickly with a 5-under 30 on the front nine, opening with three straight birdies and adding two more at the sixth and par-5 ninth.

He made three straight pars on the inward nine before getting up and down from a bunker on the reachable par-4 13th, rolling in a 13-foot birdie putt.

Kitayama failed to capitalize at No. 16, the only par-5 on the back that has played as the