Australian golfer John Senden never imagined it would take more than seven years to win again on the PGA Tour, but even more surprising was how he won the Valspar championship in Florida.
Sunday’s final at Innisbrook had all the trappings of a tournament which is survived more than it is won.
Robert Garrigus, who started the final round with the lead, hit a tee shot which bounced off a lawn chair and finished next to a tree, leading to a double bogey. Kevin Na, playing in the final group, made a double bogey during a meltdown at the end of his front nine.
Each mistake brought more players into the mix on the Copperhead course until at one point there were nine players separated by three shots with the treacherous Snake Pit stretch of three fearsome closing holes ahead.
Senden seized control on the 16th hole, with a shot into the trees.
In a three-way tie for the lead with Na and Scott Langley, Senden’s tee shot was headed for the woods when it smacked off a tree and left him an opening.
“I got a pretty good break there with hitting the tree and dropping straight down,” he said. “Then I hit a really good second shot to get in some sort of position near the green. Walking up to the shot, I just knew I had to do well to get up and down and try to have a chance to do something down the stretch.
“I thought it came out well,” he said. “It disappeared. Amazing.”
He chipped in from 70 feet for birdie to break the tie. He made a long birdie putt on the next hole to stretch his lead to two shots. And when he could hear Na made a birdie putt on the 17th hole behind him to cut the lead to one, the 42-year-old two-putted superbly for his par and a 70.
It left Senden to wait to see if Na could make birdie and force a play-off.
Na caught a flier out of the first cut of rough with a pitching wedge to 40 feet, and the birdie putt did not have a chance. He closed with a 72 to finish second, his best result on the PGA Tour since he won at Las Vegas at the end of 2011.
“I felt like if I shot par I had a chance to win,” Na said. “If I could break par, I felt like it was going to be a lock.”
Senden finished at seven under 277, the third straight event on the Florida swing where the winning score was single-digit under par.
Senden earned a spot in the Masters, always the biggest major for Australians before Adam Scott won last year.
He also secured a berth in the PGA championship, two World Golf cham- pionships at Firestone and Shanghai and Kapalua to start next year.
His only other PGA Tour win was in 2006 at the John Deere Classic. Senden capped off that year by winning the Australian Open at Royal Sydney.
“Winning is something which makes you believe you can get it done again it makes me feel validated.”
Garrigus made two double bogeys on his way to a 41 on the back nine. He also went 26 holes without a birdie during his third round on Saturday, when he led by as many as four shots but eventually finished tied for fourth with Will MacKenzie (69) and Luke Donald (70).
The American said: “I’m going to bring a chainsaw out to the place and cut a few trees down. I kept hitting it behind them all day. I just didn’t get any breaks.”