Former Colorado State University golfer Martin Laird has found himself on the PGA Tour bubble each of the last two autumns, but after Sunday he won’t have to worry about keeping his Tour card for the foreseeable future. By winning the Justin Timberlake tournament in Las Vegas, the native of Scotland earned a two-year exemption on Tour.
Laird won a three-hole playoff for his first PGA Tour win, ending things with a birdie on the third extra hole. Chad Campbell and George McNeill were also in the playoff, but Campbell exited with a bogey on the second extra hole and McNeill bogeyed the third.
So how will Laird celebrate his breakthrough victory?
“It’s going to be big,” he said. “I’m sure I will have a headache for a few days.”
Laird, runner-up in the Reno-Tahoe Open in August, came into the Timberlake event No. 134 on this year’s Tour money list, with the top 125 at the end of the season retaining their fully-exempt status for 2010. Laird knows all about that situation, having finished No. 125 on the money list a year ago. But with Sunday’s victory, the ex-Ram no longer has to worry about his money standing for the next couple of years.
“You are out here every week trying to win,” he said. “That’s the goal. “¦ I have been playing really well and not really thinking about (being on the bubble) too much and just going ahead and trying to win the tournament like you do you every other week. It worked for me last year, not really paying attention to where I was on the money list, and it’s worked again for me this year.”
Laird closed with a 68 Sunday to finish at 19-under-par $265, then went par-par-birdie in the playoff.
“I was pretty nervous the last two or three holes in regulation, and once I got there in the playoff I kind of relaxed a little more,” he said.
The win was worth $756,000, more than doubling Laird’s 2009 money total and leaving it at $1.27 million, good for 62nd place this year. The Scot has recorded four top-five finishes in his PGA Tour career, and three of them have come in Nevada. Besides Sunday’s victory, he’s placed fourth and second the last two years in the Reno-Tahoe Open.
“My coach, Mark McCann, said to me, “˜You should move to Nevada,'” noted Laird, who now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Laird, 26, graduated from CSU in 2004 after recording four victories during his college career, and shortly thereafter he won the 2004 Denver Open. After playing on the Nationwide Tour in 2005 and 2007 — he won one event in 2007 — he qualified for the PGA Tour, where he’s competed full-time the last two years.
