Winning Ways

Skysports.com looks at all of last week's winners including new Sony Open champion Mark Wilson.

A look back at how last week's tournaments were won

Skysports.com looks at all of last week's winners including new Sony Open champion Mark Wilson. MARK WILSON - SONY OPEN CHAMPION In the bag
Driver - Ping i15
Fairway-woods - Cleveland Hi-Bore XL
Hybrid - Ping i15
Irons - Ping i10
Wedges - Ping Tour
Putter - Ping Karsten Anser
Ball - Titleist Pro V1x Turning point After Thursday's play was washed out the organisers planned for a 36-hole Sunday finale and the weather helped them out. It meant the schedule was tight - Wilson had just six minutes between his third and fourth rounds - but it played into the hands of the eventual winner. He admitted afterwards that he had no opportunity to dwell on the situation - he just had to keep playing. His win was a slow burn affair rather than becoming apparent after a turning point. Rounds of 65-67-65-67 meant he was in the top three all week but as Sunday wore on he assumed the lead midway through the third round, slowly pulled away from the field and then did enough to keep it that way. In the final round there were many times when he started to struggle - he hit a few pulls from the tee that needed solid recoveries. But an overlooked factor in winners is good mental form rather than swing form and Wilson had it. When he drove into the trees on the eight he didn't panic, he found the fairway, played a fine approach and holed out from eight feet for par. That strong mental game remained throughout, helping him hole out from a similar distance on the penultimate green to give him a one shot advantage going down the last and it was enough. Stats The tight Waialae track demands an accurate long game and few mistakes - exactly what the winner produced. He ranked second for Driving Accuracy and tenth for Greens in Regulation. It also requires a neat short game around the Bermuda grass greens - he was tenth for Scrambling, fifth for Putting Average and sixth for Putts per Round. Only one player scored more birdies than him and he didn't make a bogey in his final 40 holes - a winning set of stats. Insight Wilson afterwards explained the importance of a recent visit to the Titleist Performance Institute at Carlsbad. "I saw Corey Puyear there and he really helped me out last November. I owe a lot to those guys. I always thought I was a great practiser, but they gave me some neat ideas. "One of the things he helped me out with a lot was reading greens, and one of the members here, Terry O'Toole, talked to me a little bit about the grain. "I just always remembered how it kind of goes to the ocean. So a putt like 16 I had today, even though it looks like it's uphill, it's actually going towards the ocean so it's a little down grain, a little quicker. "So my thought process was really good on each putt and hence my speed was good." In his words "If I think of the key to the week that's really what I did: I putted well and I took advantage of good breaks. "Even like the 8th hole today I thought I hit a pretty good drive down the left side, hit a tree and kicked back in the hazard. I felt like it was a bad break but it could have been out of the hazard so it was sort of a good break. "Also made par there. So really just took advantage of those things, never got down. "Even on 17 I wasn't stressing that I missed the green there and rolled in that par putt, which was very crucial to be able to play 18 a little bit easier." CHARL SCHWARTZEL - JOBURG OPEN CHAMPION In the bag
Driver - Nike VR Tour
Fairway-woods - Nike SQ 2
Irons - Nike VR Forged TW Blades
Wedges - Nike VR Forged
Putter - Nike METHOD 004
Ball - Nike ONE Tour D Turning point Not so much a turning point as a fact: when he began the final round, Schwartzel was tied for the lead with playing partner Thomas Aiken and Garth Mulroy, and of the 14 players within five shots of him, only one had won on the European Tour (James Kingston). The other 13 were playing under big pressure: victory, indeed any sort of decent finish, meant far more to them than it did to Schwartzel. That is one reason why the elegant South African could play so badly and still win. The other reason was that he never panicked - he missed fairways and he missed greens, but he never stopped fighting and his comfort level on a course he likes gave him the chance to make up for multiple mistakes. That was helped by no one pressuring him - none of those 14 players within four shots of him broke 70. But there was another factor. Early in the round it became apparent that the winner would emerge form the final group: Schwartzel, Aiken and Mulroy broke away from the pack. At the start of the back nine it was unclear whose name would be on the trophy, but on the next four greens Schwartzel pulled a rabbit out of the hat time and time again, as magical chips and long putts gave him three pars and a birdie. It is worth speculating on the importance of his only challengers being his two playing partners in this respect. Had they been noting his scores on a leaderboard they might have been unaffected or even pleased to see his inability to make a big move. Instead, they had a box seat to his recoveries: he kept getting into trouble, kept giving them hope, then he'd do something ridiculous to snuff out their chances. In the end neither player was good enough to cope and they wilted, giving the Sky commentators the chance to say, as the final action was played out: "I haven't seen many players play as poorly to win as Charl has today." And: "If it was horse racing there would be a steward's enquiry." Insight Last year, after he completed the Africa and Joburg Open double, this column noted that it was time for the supremely gifted Schwartzel - whose swing is one of the most envied on tour - to translate his European Tour success to the major championships because his record in the top events was poor. In a sense he did step up a little - he went head-to-head with Ernie Els in the WGC CA Championship, the first time he had contended in a WGC tournament, before finishing second. He also recorded top 20 finishes in both the Open and PGA Championships - the first time he had made the top 20 in a major. But he is better than that and the fact his close friend Louis Oosthuizen claimed the Open won't have stopped him reflecting that he could do more. That may explain his decision to take up a PGA Tour card in 2011 - it is probably designed to improve on his efforts in the American majors. So far in his career he has often excelled when playing at altitude (in Johannesburg, Madrid, Crans) and when the course is fast-running (Oitavos, Madrid again, East London). That tallies with his best major efforts - at the fast-running Hoylake and then at St Andrews and Whistling Straits last year. But he also hits his irons a towering height which suggests two things. One, as he freely admits, is a weakness in high wind (he says his light frame is a double disadvantage). The second is that his game might suit some of the resort courses on the PGA Tour and there are results to back that up: not only his second and third-placed finishes at Doral and Redstone last year, but top fives at the Belfry and Loch Lomond, two of the European Tour's more US-style venues. In his words "Thomas and Garth probably outplayed me on the back nine by quite a bit, but I just managed to get the ball in the hole. "For me I didn't really play well on those last nine holes, but I just kept telling myself 'you've got a good short game and you can do it' and my putting along with the short game came to the rescue. "It sounds easy, but I've been working really hard on my pitch shots, bunker play and chipping and it helped me when I needed it most today. "I got off to an absolutely perfect start today, I got my nose ahead. "Coming down the ninth, I hit it slightly too hard and it went over the back. It was a bad bogey for me and things started getting a bit shaky for me. "I had to really dig deep there on the back nine and managed to make a score. I'm really pleased that all my hard work has paid off." AROUND THE WORLD: CHALLENGE TOUR
Gaganjeet Bhullar - Gujarat Kensville Challenge winner The Challenge Tour's first venture to India witnessed another victory for a young Asian talent. The 22-year-old Bhullar won the third professional title of his career, having claimed two previously on the Asian Tour (he does also have one win on the lower level Indian Tour). He has also finished second on four occasions which, given that this was just his 70th start, means he has a 10% strike rate of finishing in the top two.