 | FINAL SCORES +44 B Davis (Eng) +43 P Casey (Eng), N O'Hern (Aus) +39 S Gardiner (Aus), T Levet (Fra), N Flanagan (Aus) +37 N O'Hern (Aus), S Webster (Eng) |
Brian Davis won his second European Tour title with a dramatic one-point victory over defending champion Paul Casey at the ANZ Championship. The 29-year-old, whose only previous victory came at the Peugeot Open in Spain in 2000, sank 10 birdies in a scintillating final round of 65.
Davis played aggressive golf and limited his bogeys to just three.
That gave him a modified stableford score of 17 points and lifted him into the lead on 44.
Davis then sat back and watched as Casey missed an eagle putt on the last to finish second with 43.
Overnight leader Steve Webster imploded on the 18th in a desperate search for the eagle he needed for the title.
After three solid days, the experience of leading into the final day for the first time seemed to get to Webster who only remained part of the leading pack courtesy of an eagle on the ninth.
Otherwise, he managed only one birdie but six bogeys before reaching the 18th on 40 points, only one better than when he teed off.
Nevertheless, a five-point eagle would have won him his first European Tour title so he took on the challenge but drove his first out of bounds left and the provisional into the water.
He ended with a double-bogey, sacrificed third place to finish tied for fifth and with that, Davis was champion.
In the modified stableford format, an albatross is worth eight points, an eagle five and a birdie two, while a par is worth nothing and players lose one point for a bogey and two for multiple bogeys.
Britain's Laura Davies, a former women's world number one, missed the cut after becoming the first woman to play in a men's European Tour event.