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Around The World

Coming off three straight top-five finishes (including contending late at The Masters and losing a playoff in Houston to a Matt Jones chip-in), Matt Kuchar seemed a good bet to contend at the RBC Heritage – even after trailing 54-hole leader Luke Donald by four strokes on Saturday night.  But on a Sunday which saw the week’s first really good golfing weather, Kuchar came out blazing, logging seven birdies over Harbour Town’s first 10 holes and eventually taking a one-stroke lead to the tee of the par-3 17th.  Looking for a clinching birdie, he ripped a seven iron inside of eight feet, then promptly three putted to fall back into a tie with Donald, who had rebounded with four big birdies after double-bogeying the 6th and bogeying the 10th.  Kuchar then landed his 5 iron approach to the long par-4 18th in a fronting bunker and, with victory seemingly about to slip through his grasp once more, proceeded to hole the bunker shot to claim the title.  Kuchar’s seven-under-par 64 matched Pat Perez for the week’s low round, and was just enough to secure his seventh PGA Tour victory, and his first since the 2013 Memorial Tournament.  For former world number one Donald, the runner-up finish was his third at Harbour Town, and represented his fifth time finishing among the top three there………………With 10 previous career victories on the Asian and Japan Tours, Lee Westwood has proven himself a very dangerous man on Asian soil - thus leaving nobody surprised when he claimed a wire-to-wire triumph in his first 2014 visit to the region, at the Maybank Malaysian Open.  Having made the long plane flight from the previous week’s Masters, Westwood seemed unaffected by the travel while opening with rounds of 65-66 to grab a our-stroke 36-hole lead.  A third-round 71 brought him back to the field, however, but his one-stroke 54-hole lead suddenly blossomed to four on Sunday when leading pursuer Andy Sullivan triple-bogeyed the par-4 2nd hole.  Sullivan actually clawed gamely back with birdies at the 4th, 5th and 6th, but tumbled once again thereafter, allowing Westwood to expand his lead to six via birdies at the 10th and 13th, the latter following a four-hour and 13 minute weather delay when lightning threatened the Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club layout.  Cruising home thereafter, he would eventually birdie the 634-yard finisher to stretch the margin of victory to seven.  Second place was shared by Louis Oosthuizen (who joined Westwood as the only world top-50s in the field), Austria’s Bernd Wiesberger and Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts.  The win was Westwood’s 40th career title worldwide, including a victory in this same event 17 years earlier………………Little known beyond the Japan Golf Tour over his first 11 competitive seasons, thirty-three-year-old Yusaku Miyazato jumped into the limelight by winning 2013’s season-ending Golf Nippon Series JT Cup, then began the Tour’s 2014 domestic schedule in similar style, claiming the Token Homemate Cup in Nagoya.  Following rounds of 71-66-68, Miyazato began the final round as one of five players trailing 54-hole leader Daisuke Maruyama by a single stroke, but he quickly seized the lead in grand style by birdieing his first five holes and turning in 30.  A three-putt bogey at the par-4 10th briefly slowed his momentum before Miyazato again caught fire with birdies at the 11th, 12th and 14th to surge back to a three-stroke advantage.  Another three-putt bogey at the par-3 16th ultimately saw him home in 65, good enough for a two-shot triumph over Hiroshi Iwata, who only pulled that close via three birdies over his final five holes. 

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2014 at 09:13PM by Registered CommenterDaniel | Comments Off