Kuala Lumpur: Fabrizio Zanotti completed a brilliant final round with a birdie-eagle finish to claim a one-shot victory at the Maybank Championship on Sunday as the Paraguayan stormed to his second European Tour title.
The 33-year-old trailed overnight leader Danny Willett by six shots at the start of the day, aware that only a faultless 18 holes were required to capture a first win since he triumphed in a playoff at the 2014 BMW International Open.
He duly obliged, scorching the Saujana Golf and Country Club course with a bogey-free round of nine-under-par 63 to finish with a 72-hole total of 19-under.
As US Masters champion Willett let slip his three-shot advantage, David Lipsky emerged as Zanotti’s closest rival but the American failed to get up-and-down from a greenside bunker for a birdie at the last that would have forced a play-off.
“It was a great effort, a great day for me. I am really happy,” Zanotti said in a post-round interview after Lipsky’s 12-foot birdie putt stopped short of the cup and confirmed his title.
Lipsky carded a 67 to finish on 18-under, one stroke ahead of Austria’s Bernd Wiesberger and two clear of France’s Alexander Levy.
Willett, who has yet to win since his triumph at Augusta last April, never found any consistency and a bogey at the last completed a disappointing one-over round that dropped him into a share of fifth place alongside China’s Li Haotong.
Zanotti arrived in Malaysia after three missed cuts in as many tournaments this season and few would have tipped him to emerge victorious at an event co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour.
“Golf is like that. I have been working a lot in the pre-season with my coach, with my team and making a few changes, seeing my golf swing,” he said.
“I just got here... three missed cuts in a row. I thought I will just take it easy this week. It was that way. I played very calm, played shot-by-shot all the four rounds.”
In a round worthy of winning any title, Zanotti picked up four shots on the front nine and added three more birdies coming in before he celebrated the spectacular eagle on the par-five 18th in Seve Ballesteros style with a fist pump and a roar.
In San Francisco, Jordan Spieth fired eight birdies in a seven-under par 65 on Saturday to seize a six-shot lead after three rounds of the weather-disrupted US PGA Tour Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
Spieth, in a three-way tie for the lead with world number one Jason Day and Derek Fathauer when the second round concluded early Saturday, pulled inexorably away with a sparkling effort at Pebble Beach Golf Links, one of three courses in use over the first three rounds of the tournament.
The two-time major champion, seeking his first PGA title of 2017, opened with back to back birdies. His only bogey of the round, at the eighth, was followed by three birdies in a row at the ninth, 10th and 11th.
