Woodland led by one shot overnight after Hojgaard, chasing his first PGA Tour win, backed up a sublime eight-under-par 62 on Friday with a seven-under-par 63 on Saturday.<\/p>\n
But the American showed remarkable calm and control on a masterful front nine, featuring four birdies, to move into a lead he never looked like relinquishing.<\/p>\n
Hojgaard also had two bogeys and one double bogey, despite two birdies, in his first 10 holes to boost Woodland’s chances.<\/p>\n
The Dane closed the gap to five shots on the 14th hole – finding a birdie while Woodland carded a bogey – then four shots with another birdie on the 16th.<\/p>\n
But Woodland matched him with a par on 17 and made par at the last, while Hojgaard dropped another shot.<\/p>\n
Woodland received a warm reception from the crowd down the stretch, which turned to rapturous applause and chants of “Gary, Gary” as he sank his putt for victory.<\/p>\n
It is Woodland’s fifth PGA Tour triumph and perhaps sets him up to challenge for the first major of the season at next month’s Masters.<\/p>\n
When asked about his chances at Augusta, he emphasised he still had personal and mental issues to work on, but added: “My game is better than it’s ever been.”<\/p>\n
American Johnny Keefer and Australia’s Min Woo Lee tied for third, one stroke behind Hojgaard, on 15 under.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his achievement, Woodland said he was “most proud” that he “didn’t give up” on his career over a difficult past few years.<\/p>\n
He added: “I tried to slow down and take things in because it didn’t feel like this was possible a couple of years ago.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woodland led by one shot overnight after Hojgaard, chasing his first PGA Tour win, backed up a sublime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[99],"class_list":{"0":"post-553269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}