28-year-old Swede Jesper Svensson tied the course record in Singapore and won a three-hole playoff to claim his first DP World Tour title.
He shot a 9-under 63 at Laguna National Golf Resort Club to move up the leaderboard to 17 under, while Kiradek Afibanrat also finished after 72 holes.
Svensson took the clubhouse lead with birdies on the 17th and 18th holes, then Afiburnrat tied it with an eagle.
And in the playoffs, both players birdied the first hole of the playoff (the par-5 18th) and traded pars on the second.
In the third time, DP World Tour rookie Svensson showed off. Afibarnrat airmailed his third shot on the 18th and settled for bogey, while the Swede made two putts for par and won.
“It’s been a long journey,” Svensson said. said after winning By DP World Tour.
“I never dreamed of winning my first season here. It’s always been a dream of mine to win on the DP World Tour and it feels really great to have achieved it.”
The Swede turned professional in the summer of 2019, joining the Nordic Golf League, two levels below European professional golf’s DP World Tour. After winning the final race of the 2020 season, he was promoted to the Challenge Tour, the DP World Tour’s equivalent of the Korn Ferry Tour.
He continued to rise in the rankings, finishing in 36th place at the end of the 2021 Challenge Tour season, earning him a spot on the DP World Tour the following year.
However, his first win on the Challenge Tour came in May 2023, when he finished one stroke behind Branden Stone at the B-NL Challenge Trophy in the Netherlands.
This, combined with his two runner-up finishes at the end of the year, puts Svensson in fifth place in the Challenge Tour rankings and qualifies him for the 2024 DP World Tour. Since then, he has finished runner-up twice and won the Investec South African Open in 2019. in December and recently at the Bahrain Championship.
“If you include last year’s Challenge Tour and the beginning of this season, we finished second five times last year,” Svensson added.
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“I really wanted to be at the top here.”
Svensson started the final round five shots off the lead, but quickly recovered with birdies on No. 1 and No. 2. He chased them with an eagle on the par-5 third. Two more birdies followed on the sixth and eighth holes, the latter of which resulted in a chip-in.
He then dropped two strokes on the 9th and 10th holes, bringing his total to 11 under and winning the championship.
Still, Svensson made a comeback with birdies on the 12th and 13th to take a one-shot lead.
Then he shot of the day On the par-5 14th, the ball hit the green in two, eight feet from the pin. He followed that up with an eagle, and suddenly Svensson had a three-stroke lead.
“I was thinking about making a layup on the 14th,” Svensson said.
“We both said, ‘No, we can’t finish second again.’ That was our best shot of the week.”
The move paid off, and although Svensson bogeyed the 15th, he made birdie-birdie and shot a 63. But it took an extra hole to get his first win, and luckily Svensson won.
Other competitors included Mathieu Pabon, who finished fifth, and LIV Golf’s Paul Casey, who finished solo in sixth place. Shane Lowry also played and tied for 29th place.
Jack Mirko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through.Be sure to check it out @_PlayingThrough Cover more golf. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko In the same way.
