Séamus Power lets Valspar Championships hopes slip

Seamus Power entered the final round in second place, two shots behind 54-hole leader Keith Mitchell, at the Valspar Championship at Copperhead Course in Palm Harbor, Florida.

Séamus Power was bitten long before he ever got to the “Snakepit,” a run of finishing holes at Copperhead which has long proven a dangerous stretch for any player with ambitions of claiming the Valspar Championship.

While Power entered the final round in second place, two shots behind 54-hole leader Keith Mitchell, with genuine ambitions of securing a third career win on the PGA Tour, the Waterford man’s ambitions dwindled with each hole in an outward 38 and then vanished with a double-bogey five on the Par 3 13th where he put his tee shot into water and moved him to five-over on his round.

Power ultimately signed for a disappointing closing round 76 for 281 for in tied-25th place, nine shots behind Peter Malnati – a player director on the PGA Tour’s policy board – who won for the first time since his only tour win in the Sanderson Farms back in 2015.

Some nine years and more than 250 events later, Malnati emerged from a crowded leaderboard with a hat-trick of birdies from the 10th to the 12th and then birdied the Par 3 17th (at the same time as Cameron Young bogeyed the 18th) to move into the outright lead.

The 36-year-old American’s closing 67 for a total of 12-under-par 272 gave him an emotional win inf front of his family: “I told myself I was giving myself my very best on every shot, it is just amazing . . . . you wonder if you are ever going to do it again, it’s hard.”

For Young, who finished in solo second two shots adrift of Malnati, it was yet another close call in his quest for a breakthrough tour win; it was his seventh runner-up finish.

“I think I kept myself in it mentally really well today. I hit a couple shots I was really proud of late. Those two par-3s on the back, both kind of can bite you. But I think I handled my own thoughts really well and, for me, that’s a big win regardless of the outcome,” said Young.

In the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship at Palos Verdes in California on the LPGA Tour, Leona Maguire – who’d also entered the final round with title ambitions – finished with a closing 72 for a total of four-under-par 280, which left her in tied-13th, five strokes behind Nelly Korda and Ryann O’Toole who went to a playoff.E

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Philip Reid is Golf Correspondent of The Irish Times