After playing in the Masters the last two years, Martin Laird waited until the 11th hour to earn a return trip to Augusta National.
The former Colorado State University golfer, who had been having a poor PGA Tour season by his standards, turned things around in emphatic fashion by winning Sunday at the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio.
A victory in the last tournament before the Masters was the only way left for him to gain an invitation to the first major championship of 2013, and Laird made the most of that narrow window of opportunity by punching his ticket with a stellar performance.
Laird tied the course record at the TPC San Antonio in Sunday’s final round with a bogey-free 9-under-par 63 to fend off Rory McIlroy, the No. 2-ranked player in the world. Laird’s 14-under 274 total was good for a two-stroke victory over McIlroy.
It was the third win of Laird’s PGA Tour career, and his first in more than two years.
“I’ve probably been asked 30 times in the last couple of weeks, ‘Are you in Augusta, are you in Augusta?'” Laird said Sunday afternoon. “Everytime I’d say ‘no’ it hurt me.”
Besides landing a berth in the Masters — which will mark his 11th staight major — the Scotsman became the first non-American to win on the PGA Tour in 2013. U.S. players had prevailed in the first 14 events of the season.
Few people would have expected Laird to win in Texas given how things had been going this season. His best official finish this year was 34th place, and he missed the cut in last week’s Shell Houston Open. All told, he made just four cuts in his first eight events of 2013.
In fact, Laird hadn’t had an official top-25 finish on Tour since last July. But a four-hour practice session while at the Houston Open apparently turned things around.
“I came in here quietly confident, even though my record this year has been poor to say the least,” said Laird, who started working with a new swing coach, Randy Smith, last September. “But golf’s a funny game. It doesn’t matter what you did two weeks ago. It turns around pretty quickly.”
The 2004 CSU graduate came into Sunday in seventh place, five strokes out of the lead. But his nine-birdie, no-bogey round vaulted him to victory.
Using his anchored putter, Laird birdied No. 8 to tie for the lead, and he grabbed the top spot outright with another birdie on 12. And he won going away with back-to-back-to-back 15-foot birdie putts on Nos. 16, 17 and 18.
“I know how good Rory is, but it doesn’t matter if it’s Rory or Jim (Furyk) or Billy (Horschel), if someone’s behind me making birdies like they were, I know I’ve got to keep making birdies,” Laird said. “That was a pretty strong leaderboard at the top there.”
Even McIlroy had to admit that Laird’s final round was just too strong to overcome. After Laird put his old putter back in the bag in San Antonio — the one with which he won the 2011 Arnold Palmer Invitational — the Scotsman needed just 22 putts in the final round.
“A 63 in these conditions is phenomenal,” McIlroy said. “… Martin just played too good and holed so many putts. It was hard to keep up.”
Sunday’s victory was worth $1.116 million for Laird, who vaulted to 15th on the 2013 PGA Tour money list with $1,185,200.
For complete results from the Valero Texas Open, CLICK HERE.
