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Walker strolls to victory in Texas

By: Golf Shake | Mon 30 Mar 2015


Post by Sports Writer, Derek Clements


JUST as he did last season, Jimmy Walker became the first double winner of the year when he won the Valero Texas Open, beating Jordan Spieth into second place with an extraordinary display on the greens. That he did it in San Antonio, in front of a hometown crowd, just made the win even more special

Walker grew up coming to watch this tournament as a spectator and lives half an hour from the course, so this was as close to a home victory as it is possible to achieve and it meant a great deal to him.
"To play this well at home in front of everybody, it's amazing," Walker said. "I don't know how else to describe it. It's cool. I just tried to stay composed and not get ahead of myself. Out here, no lead is safe and on this golf course a big number is right around the corner if you're not careful."

Walker finished the day as he began it, four ahead of Spieth, 21. The youngster birdied the opening the hole to reduce the deficit to three, but Walker just focused on his own game. With what he described as his worst drive of the week, Walker found the trees at the fourth and did well to get up and down for a bogey. Spieth dropped a shot at the same hole, having also done so at the third and although he birdied the fifth, he had another bogey at the eighth and reached the turn in a one-over 37 to fall five adrift of Walker. Another one went at the 10th and when Walker birdied the same hole the lead was seven.


Highlights from the final day of the Valero Texas Open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1HJ7vMR6M


But you can never keep Spieth down for long and he started making birdies on the back nine - lots of them. He rolled in a huge birdie putt at the 14th and then watched Walker hole a ten-footer to save par at the same hole. Spieth hit his approach at the 15th to nine feet and holed the putt. And he did the same at the 16th and 17th. The problem was that Walker matched the birdies on 16th and 17th and remained four clear.

"I obviously would have liked to make that run a little earlier to make it a shootout," Spieth said. "But I just didn't have that stuff around that middle stretch of the round, made a couple of costly mistakes, where I was trying to be a little too aggressive. You just can't do that. To come from four back was going to be really hard today. I had to play a flawless, and I didn't do that."

Billy Horschell finished third and it was interesting to hear him blame bad bounces and the wind dropping for failing to maintain his challenge, rather than just keeping his head down and getting on with the job at hand. You would never hear Spieth or Walker talk that way, and that may tell you everything you need to know.

Walker extended his lead in the FedEx Cup to almost 500 points, with Spieth now his nearest challenger. Both men will now play in the Shell Houston Open before heading to Augusta for The Masters. You can't win a Green Jacket unless you putt well and nobody putted better in Texas than Walker. A word, too, for Dustin Johnson, who had a dreadful opening round of 78 but stuck to his task to make the cut and then had a pair of 68s over the weekend - better than anybody else by three shots. If ever a man was ready for The Masters, it is Johnson.


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Tags: PGA Tour Jimmy Walker



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