Lucerne, Switzerland (Sports Network) – Victor Riu shot 1-under-par 70 on Sunday and won the Swiss Challenge by three strokes.<\/p>\n
Riu finished 72 holes at Golf Sempachersee at 19-under 265 for his maiden Challenge Tour win.<\/p>\n
“I’m so happy, but it hasn’t quite sunk in yet,” said the 28-year-old. “I struggled a lot at the start so I’m delighted that I was able to produce a strong finish.”<\/p>\n
American Brinson Paolini shot 65 and tied for second in his first tournament as a professional. He finished alongside Adam Gee, who shot 67, at 16-under par.<\/p>\n
Pedro Oriol (64), Sihwan Kim (66) and Jamie McLeary (70) shared fourth place at minus-15.<\/p>\n
Riu began the final round with a 4-stroke lead, but he was 2-over par through 10 holes, allowing Gee to pull even.<\/p>\n
At the 15th, Riu rallied with a birdie, and Gee, playing in the group ahead, bogeyed, giving the former a 2-stroke cushion.<\/p>\n
Riu then locked up the win with back-to-back birdies at 16 and 17, rendering Gee’s eagle-bogey finish obsolete.<\/p>\n
“My putting was a lot better on the back nine, and it was important to get that birdie on the 17th to play the last with no pressure,” said Riu. “It’s a tricky hole with a difficult green, and it’s easy to make bogey. On the 17th there was still only one shot in it, as I didn’t know Adam had bogeyed the last, so it was a relief to make a birdie there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lucerne, Switzerland (Sports Network) – Victor Riu shot 1-under-par 70 on Sunday and won the Swiss Challenge by three strokes. Riu finished 72 holes at Golf Sempachersee at 19-under 265 for his maiden Challenge Tour win. “I’m so happy, but it hasn’t quite sunk in yet,” said the 28-year-old. “I struggled a lot at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}