HONOLULU — Mark Wilson made it through a 36-hole marathon Sunday without a bogey and held on for a two-shot victory in the Sony Open that will take him to the Masters for the first time.
Wilson shot a 5-under-par 65 in the morning to take a one-shot lead into the afternoon round. He stretched his lead to four shots at the turn, then had to hang on when Tim Clark and Steve Marino made late runs on different sides of Waialae.
Clark, who started the final round five shots behind, birdied three of his last four holes. He narrowly missed an eagle putt on the ninth hole and settled for a 64.
Then came Marino with two late birdies and one incredible shot. Two shots behind on the par-5 18th, with his feet in the bunker and his ball about chest-high on the side of a hill, Marino blasted a fairway metal from 234 yards that landed on the front of the green and rolled 40 feet away. His eagle putt narrowly missed, giving him a 68.
Wilson made one last birdie he didn’t need, giving him a 67 for his third career victory.
“It was nice to go right to the tee and not have to think about it,” Wilson said of having only a few minutes before the third and fourth rounds. “I’m thankful it’s over now.”
Wilson, who finished at 16-under 264, played his final 40 holes without a bogey. That proved significant in the final round. He got into trouble on the eighth hole and was 150 yards out in the fairway playing his third shot, sure to lose some of his two-shot lead. But he stuffed it to 7 feet for par, then birdied the ninth to expand his lead to four.
The win, worth $990,000, was important to Wilson for a couple of reasons. He is in the last year of his exemption from winning in Mexico in 2009, and he is coming off a poor season in which he had only two top 10s.
And then there’s the Masters. Augusta National did not invite winners of most PGA Tour events until 2007, a month after Wilson won the Honda Classic. His win in Mexico didn’t count because it was an opposite-field tournament, the same week as the Match Play Championship.
