Marc Leishman has capped off a year of near-misses with a thrilling one-shot win in a windswept final round of the Victorian PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
In wild conditions at Moonah Links, Leishman teed off on the 18th hole on Sunday tied for the lead with fellow Victorian Josh Younger at four under.<\/p>\n
Leishman showed his wizardry with a birdie to set up victory, while Younger had to settle for a par and outright second place.<\/p>\n
Victory broke a 17-year title drought on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australia for Leishman, who claimed the same event in 2008.<\/p>\n
Leishman carded a four-over 76 on Sunday after earlier rounds of 71, 67 and 68, to finish at five under par.<\/p>\n
Younger (70, 64, 73, 76) had the outright lead for much of the final round but also carded a four-over for the day.<\/p>\n
Three other Australians – Adam Bland (74), Andrew Campbell (76) and Connor McDade (73) – and New Zealander Jimmy Zheng (71) were a stroke further back.<\/p>\n
Leishman admitted he was relieved to be able to survive a gruelling final round in chilly, gusty conditions.<\/p>\n
“It was a brutally tough day,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I sort of knew it was going to be like that, (but) you hope you can shoot better than that.<\/p>\n
“On days like this, obviously you know everyone’s going to be having bogeys and unfortunately I had a few early, but fought back and managed to birdie the last there, which was nice.”<\/p>\n
Leishman’s victory completed a run of high finishes in recent times, including a tie for third at both the West Australian Open and the Australian PGA Championship, backing up his win earlier in the year at LIV Miami.<\/p>\n
“I’m really happy to get a victory,” Leishman said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been playing well for the last, well, all year really. I’ve been hitting the ball great these last three weeks in Australia with not a whole lot to show for it results-wise, but it’s nice to walk away with a win here.”<\/p>\n
His second Victorian PGA title lifts Leishman to second place on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit.<\/p>\n
He will now give some thought to possibly adding an event or two to his schedule in the second half of the year to push for the coveted No.1 spot.<\/p>\n
The 42-year-old, a former Greg Norman Medal winner, is a six-time winner on the PGA Tour, and has also won an individual tournament with LIV Golf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marc Leishman has capped off a year of near-misses with a thrilling one-shot win in a windswept final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-348232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}