HONOLULU – At least Jimmy Walker is leaving Hawaii with one trophy.

Six days after losing a tournament on Maui he felt he should have won, Walker turned in a command performance Sunday on Oahu. He blew away the field with a 7-under 63 to win the Sony Open for the second straight year.

His fourth career victory was the most impressive of all. On a course that lends itself to a free-for-all, Walker shot 62-63 on the weekend and set a tournament record with a nine-shot victory. The previous record was seven shots, last set in 2000 by Paul Azinger.

Walker became the first repeat winner at the Sony Open since Ernie Els in 2004.

Scott Piercy closed with a 66 to finish alone in second. Matt Kuchar, who started the final round two shots out of the lead, didn’t make a birdie and shot 71 to tie for third with Harris English and Gary Woodland, who each had a 67. Kuchar ended his streak of 255 rounds on the PGA Tour with at least one birdie.

But this was Walker’s show, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Walker had a three-shot lead with five holes to play at Kapalua last Monday when he wound up losing to Patrick Reed in a playoff at the Tournament of Champions. With a quick turnaround, he quickly put it behind him.

“I really wanted to finish out the day like I didn’t do last week,” Walker said.

He finished at 23-under 257.

The decisive moment came at the par-4 eighth hole. Walker and Kuchar both opened with seven straight pars, and Walker stuffed his approach to 3 feet for birdie. Kuchar pulled his tee shot into the royal palms, punched out short of the green and made bogey.

That two-shot swing gave Walker a four-shot lead, and he was on his way.

Walker made all seven of his birdies over the final 11 holes, and he couldn’t miss on the back nine. He took a total of 20 putts on the back nine at Waialae in the third and fourth rounds. And even with a big lead, he kept grinding away over putts he didn’t need to make.

David Hearn of Brantford, Ont. carded a final-round 68 to tie for 51st at 5-under 275.

Roger Sloan finished alone in 67th at 1-under 279.

Nick Taylor tied for 68th at even-par 280.

HONOLULU – His left eye bruised and swollen shut, Australian golfer Robert Allenby is still shaking over a beating and robbery that left him unable to remember anything except being dumped in a gutter near a park of homeless people.

“You think … that happens in the movie, not real life,” Allenby told The Associated Press by phone Sunday. “I’m just happy to be alive.”

Allenby posted a photo to his private Facebook account showing a bloodied scrape on his forecast and the bridge of his nose. He said that came from being tossed from the trunk of a car. He said the bruise on his left eye must have come from being beaten in the car.

“I don’t know what they hit me with between the eyeballs, whether a fist or a baseball bat,” he said. “Whatever it was, it hurts.”

Allenby missed the Sony Open cut and then went to Amuse Wine Bar in Honolulu on Friday night with his caddie and a friend from Australia. He had been to the bar earlier in the week, thought it was a trendy spot and wanted to try the restaurant. Allenby remembers having dinner, a few glasses of red wine and that was about it.

Even after he returned to the bar on Saturday with police and watched tape from a surveillance camera that showed him leaving with four people, he doesn’t know who they were or even leaving the bar. Allenby said he has no recollection until getting kicked and prodded by homeless people searching for whatever he had left.

Allenby said his wallet, cash, driver’s license, PGA Tour badge and cellphone were taken. All he had on him in the gutter were two receipts, the American Express card to pay for dinner that he put loosely in his pockets and a watch.

He said the receipt showed that he paid for dinner at 10:06 p.m. Friday, and paid for the wine at 10:48. He said the restaurant closed at 11 p.m.

Allenby said he was checked out by the doctors, but he did not have a blood test to determine if he was drugged.

“I did ask to get a blood test, but they said it was probably out of your system,” he said.

The Honolulu Police Department did not return repeated calls. TV station KHON2 in Honolulu reported Saturday that the matter was being investigated as second-degree robbery.

The image of Allenby’s face, which he posted to Facebook, was a jarring image in the middle of a golf tournament. Webb Simpson ran into Allenby went he got back to the hotel last night.

“I could believe what happened to him,” Simpson said.

Allenby said surveillance cameras showed his friend Anthony Puntoriero talking to someone in the bar.

“I think that was a decoy, a distraction,” Allenby said. “I went to the bathroom, came out of the bathroom and was told that Anthony had left and was downstairs waiting for me. I go downstairs and then, bang! They knock me out and take me six or seven miles away.”

He said the tape showed one man put a hand on Allenby’s shoulder.

“I seriously don’t even remember meeting these people,” he said. “That’s what is weird. All I know is that I was walking very quietly with them and normal. It didn’t make any sense at all.”

Allenby said a homeless woman told him he was thrown out of the car, but the ordeal wasn’t over just yet. He said several homeless were “kicking me to see if I was alive, and then trying to steal everything else from me.”

He said a man who said he was in the Army came to his aid. Instead of calling an ambulance or the police, Allenby said he wanted to go back to the Kahala Resort at Waialae Country Club because “I just wanted to be in a safe place.”

Allenby said he called daughter Lily, who turned 13 on Saturday, and she was sobbing.

He said his body felt fine except for the swollen left eye and scrapes on his face. He was hoping to make his flight Sunday night to Los Angeles, and then he would decide if he was fit to play the Humana Challenge next week in La Quinta, California.

Allenby has 22 wins worldwide, including four on the PGA Tour, the last one in 2001. He has played in the Presidents Cup six times.

“I’m still shaking, still scared,” he said. “It’s just so surreal, just amazing. How does that happen to me? I went from one area where I could have died to another area where I got dumped and homeless people are trying to mug me even more. Sometimes we’re all naive. We only think this happens in the movies.”

HONOLULU – Jimmy Walker has a two-shot lead in the Sony Open and knows how to approach the final round.

Don’t let up.

The experience isn’t from Monday at Kapalua, where he had a three-shot lead with five holes to play and wound up losing in a playoff to Patrick Reed. It’s from last year at Waialae, where he emerged from a five-way tie for the lead by closing with a 63 to win.

“Somebody is shooting a low round every day, and you never know where it’s going to come from,” Walker said. “So you’ve got to go out with the expectation you’ve got to shoot a good score tomorrow.”

On Saturday, one of those rounds belonged to Walker.

With a putting performance reminiscent of his final round a year ago, Walker one-putted his last 11 holes on his way to an 8-under 62, giving him a two-shot lead over Matt Kuchar and a chance to become the first back-to-back winner of the Sony Open since Ernie Els in 2004.

“I feel good about what I’m doing,” said Walker, who was at 16-under 194. “Like I said, I can only go out and control what I can do tomorrow, and I can’t put anything on anybody else. I’m going to just keep trying to hit the golf shots, hit the shots I see, put it under the hole, give myself some good looks, make some putts.”

Kuchar, one of three players tied for the lead at the start of Saturday, birdied two of his last three holes for a 68 and was two shots behind.

Without the strong wind typical of this tournament, there has been a score of at least 62 every round. That led Kuchar to say that anyone within six shots of the lead would be a threat in that final round.

If that’s the case, this could very much be up for grabs.

Brian Harman (64) and Troy Merritt (67) were three shots behind, while Tim Clark (68) and Justin Thomas (70) were another shot back.

The 21-year-old Thomas, playing in the final group on the weekend for the first time, twice made key putts to turn double bogeys into only bogeys. He was tied for the lead through 12 holes until going well long on the 13th and scratching out a bogey, then dropping another shot on the 16th before closing with a birdie.

Max Homa, a former NCAA champion from Cal, had a 63 and was five shots behind.

Walker, however, has been steady and good during his two-week stay in paradise. This was his 13th consecutive round under par in the Aloha State, and he was tied for the 54-hole lead last week at Kapalua.

Walker said the loss stung, though he was helped by the short turnaround. And playing good golf puts last week even further in the past.

“It’s nice to get back right where we want to be, having a chance to win, especially after last week,” he said. “I think it’s pretty cool.”

Still, he thought he was losing ground when he was only 1-under par for the day going to the eighth hole. He made his birdie at No. 8 and turned to caddie Andy Sanders and said, “Let’s get going.” And they did.

The key putt was a 12-footer at the par-5 ninth to keep his momentum, and a 20-foot birdie putt on the 10th. Just like that, he was back in the game, and Walker poured it on from there. Only after a tap-in birdie at the 15th did it dawn on him that he had been making a lot of putts.

“I kind of went back through it and I counted eight (one-putts), and then when I hit it up on the green on 16 I thought, `This is going to be a tough one to keep the streak going,'” Walker said.

From 30 feet, the putt was in the center of the cup.

Walker stretched his lead to as many as four shots until he caught a plugged lie in the bunker on the 17th, took two to get out, and then made a 5-foot bogey putt. He escaped trouble from a palm tree on the par-5 18th hole, hit his third shot from 210 yards into 10 feet and finished in style.

Webb Simpson, who joined Kuchar and Thomas atop the leaderboard through 36 holes, finally struggled to make putts and shot 72 to fall six shots behind.

Kuchar three-putted the seventh green for bogey to fall to 1 over on his round, and that was the last shot he dropped. He didn’t make enough birdies to get back into the lead, but he made enough to at least give himself a chance.

Nick Taylor and Roger Sloan share 56th spot at 4-under par.

David Hearn made a 10-foot birdie putt on his last hole that knocked five players out of the 54-hole cut. Seventy players made the Saturday cut at 3-under 207, a group that did not include 16-year-old Kyle Suppa, a junior at Punahou School. Hearn is tied for 61st at 3-under.

HONOLULU – Webb Simpson is one of those players who won’t break anything that doesn’t need fixing. But with change on the horizon because of a new rule that will outlaw the anchored stroke he uses for his belly putter, he opted for a radical solution.

He broke his putter.

“Snapped it over my knee,” Simpson said. “It’s a thick, heavy shaft, so I gave it all I had over my knee. It was a clean, flush break.”

A clean break, indeed.

So determined to change on his own terms instead of waiting until the new rule takes effect in 2016, Simpson made sure he couldn’t go back to the putter that helped to bring him a U.S. Open title, a spot on the last two Ryder Cup teams and a spot in the Tour Championship each of the last four years.

So far, it’s working out just fine.

He broke the putter before going to the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan late last year, and he brought a conventional putter to Hawaii for the first PGA Tour event of the year. He opened with a 62 in the Sony Open, and then made three birdies over the last five holes Friday for a 66 and a share of the lead with Matt Kuchar (63) and 21-year-old rookie Justin Thomas, who shot a 61.

Kuchar is always around the top of a leaderboard as one of the most consistent players in golf. Thomas ordinarily would have been the biggest surprise at Waialae, especially the way he finished – birdie-birdie-eagle to join the leaders at 12-under 128.

All things considered, Simpson was the player who never imagined being tied for the lead.

“I didn’t have much expectation coming here, to be honest with you,” he said. “I wanted to just build on what I’ve been working on and hoping that we’re doing the right stuff, and with the putter, it was just a matter this week of wanting to get comfortable on the greens, wanting to get comfortable on long putts, short putts, everything. That was the goal. I didn’t really care how I played this week.

“I wanted to get through the West Coast Swing building on what I’ve been working on, so to be in the lead is a huge bonus.”

Change was easier than he imagined.

Simpson picked up a belly putter for the first time in 2004 at Pinehurst during a family holiday. He didn’t like his inconsistent putting at Wake Forest, saw the belly putter and made everything on the practice greens. He was afraid to break it out at Wake Forest for fear of being ribbed. Not many were using one at the time.

His U.S. Open title at Olympic Club in 2012 made him the second player, after Keegan Bradley in the 2011 PGA Championship, to win a major using a belly putter.

It helped slightly that he had what Simpson considered a mediocre season on the greens.

“I finished somewhere in the 50s,” he said of his putting rank on tour. “If I was top 10 in strokes gained with the belly putter, it would have been tough to want to change. But I wanted to make a change. I’m always trying to get better. The element was that I didn’t want to be forced to switch. I didn’t want to be in a position where I felt like somebody was telling me how I can play the game. So I wanted to go ahead and do it.”

Simpson started to throw the broken pieces out. His wife, Dowd, suggested it go in the trophy case because of all the rewards he reaped with it. So maybe there’s room in the case for another trophy from the Sony Open.

There’s still plenty left to do, however.

Kuchar looked solid as ever and loves being on the greens at Waialae – smooth, small and relatively flat. It’s a big contrast from the big, sloping greens at Kapalua with plenty of grain. Kapalua also has wide fairways, and Waialae is more on the claustrophobic side.

As for Thomas? He’s not sure how he wound up tied for the lead.

The 21-year-old out of Alabama is considered one of the top rookies. Thomas knows he can play this well. He just had a hard time remembering the final few hours.

“It was probably the best zone and best focus I’ve ever been in,” Thomas said. “I knew I was playing well, but I really didn’t know how many under I was for the day, and I just kind of kept playing. It doesn’t happen very often in golf, and it’s really fun to happen. It’s probably maybe only the second time it’s ever happened to me.”

The other time was at a junior event. He was 8.

It sets up for a dynamic weekend at Waialae.

They were two shots clear of Tim Clark (65) and Troy Merritt (64). Defending champion Jimmy Walker had a 66 for his 15th consecutive round in the 60s in Hawaii. That put him in a group four shots behind, very much in the picture on a course where the leaders tend to be bunched up until the back nine on Sunday.

Calgary native and Monday qualifier Roger Sloan is the leading Canadian. Sloan has a share of 56th at 3-under.

David Hearn and Nick Taylor are a shot back of Sloan at 2-under. The pair are in a group sharing 69th spot.

Graham DeLaet and Adam Hadwin failed to make the 36-hole cut.

HONOLULU – Webb Simpson had a hard time sleeping on the eve of his first PGA Tour event of the new year. He sounded like a rookie, not a former U.S. Open champion and member of the last two Ryder Cup teams.

That’s about what he felt like with a conventional putter in his hand.

One year from now, Simpson won’t be able to play with the belly putter he has used since 2004 because of the new rule that outlaws an anchored stroke. So he decided to get an early start on the change and go with a conventional putter for the opening round of the Sony Open.

Turns out, there was no reason to sweat.

Simpson made birdie on half of the holes at Waialae, matched the front-nine record with a 28 and posted an 8-under 62 to share the lead with Paul Casey. They were one shot ahead of Camilo Villegas and Robert Streb on a peaceful day just down the beach from Waikiki.

Simpson majored in religion at Wake Forest, and he said that religion “gets thrown around a lot” in sports. But he was serious about it on Thursday.

“Today was a big day for me,” Simpson said. “I was extremely nervous – first round on the PGA Tour with a short putter. But I just had a couple (Bible) verses in my yardage book today that I kept reading, and I stayed calm. All thanks to God for giving me strength to just get through today.

“Today was a hurdle I felt like I needed to get over, and just real thankful.”

Casey returned to these shores for the first time in a decade, and it would be easy to suggest he should never have stopped coming. That would be to ignore that he missed the cut in 2005, and that as a European Tour member, he tends to be halfway around the world in the Middle East this time of year.

Casey gave up his European membership this year because he was being run ragged across the world, has slipped out of the top 50 (making joint membership on two tours difficult) and just had a his first child and wants to be closer to home.

The decision felt easier when he also made nine birdies to share the lead with Simpson. Casey made two birdies to end the back nine, and then piled up three more birdies to start the front nine. And when he rolled in a 12-foot birdie putt on No. 5, he was at 8 under with four holes to play.

Considering that the par-5 ninth is really more like a long par 4, he was close to thinking about a 59. But then he three-putted for bogey on No. 6 and happily accepted a very good start to his 2015 campaign.

“For as long as I’ve been professional, I’ve been a member of the European Tour,” Casey said. “For a long, long time now, I’ve been trying to play both the PGA Tour and the European Tour, and some years I’ve done it brilliantly, and other years I’ve failed miserably, and I just didn’t want to keep putting myself in kind of a position where I’m struggling to fly around the world.”

Thursday was not much of a struggle for anyone. The typical wind has been nothing more than a rumor, and while it looked like paradise under a blue sky, the lack of trade wind has allowed for “vog” – a fog that consists of volcanic ash – to pollute the day.

It just didn’t do anything for the scores.

Rory Sabbatini had a 64 and was two shots behind. Jason Day, Matt Kuchar and Tim Clark were among those at 65. Another shot behind was Jimmy Walker, who is Oklahoma-born, Texas-bred and might want to seriously consider a piece of real estate in Hawaii. Walker, the defending champion, posted his 14th consecutive round in the 60s in the Aloha State, which computes to 54-under par or an average score of 67. No matter the math, it’s good golf.

But no one was more pleased than Simpson, mainly because he was using what felt like a foreign object for the most important club in his bag. He used the conventional putter last year in Japan, but there was something about a PGA Tour event that made him nervous.

“It was one of my best putting rounds I’ve ever had, to be honest,” he said. “I’ve been putting well with it, but it’s easy to putt well at your home course playing with your biddies. So today there was a lot of pressure. Didn’t sleep that great last night, but had a good morning, talked to my wife, good warmup, and it was big to see a few putts go in early. Real thankful for how the day unfolded.”

Brantford, Ont.’s David Hearn was low Canadian after the opening-round following a 67.

Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C. and Calgary’s Roger Sloan were at even-par following matching 70s.

Graham DeLaet had a 72. The Weyburn, Sask. native has not finished an event since the Frys.com Open in October of 2014, having to WD twice due a sore neck.

Another Abbotsford, B.C. boy, Adam Hadwin, fired a 3-over 73.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Bhavik Patel has been suspended one year for violating the PGA Tour’s anti-doping policy, making him the second player to be suspended since golf began its drug testing program in June 2008.

Patel has never played a PGA Tour event. He narrowly missed his card in last Q-school in 2012 and played the last two years on the Web.com Tour. Patel finished 103rd on the money list and did not qualify for the Web.com Tour Finals.

“In an effort to overcome an injury, I made a lapse of judgment,” Patel said in a statement released through the tour. “I regret my decision but have learned from the experience and look forward to returning to competition.”

The tour said the suspension would be retroactive to Oct. 7. That means Patel would not be eligible to play until Web.com Q-school next fall.

Under its anti-doping policy, the tour is not required to disclose the performance-enhancing drug Patel used.

Doug Barron was playing the Nationwide Tour when he was suspended in 2009 for a positive test. Barron was 40 and suffered from low testosterone. His lawsuit against the tour was resolved, and Barron returned from suspension two months early and was granted a therapeutic use exemption.

Vijay Singh, who is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, told a magazine in 2013 that he had used deer antler spray after the tour had warned players that the spray had contained IGF-1, which is on the tour’s list of banned substances. The tour had planned to suspend Singh – this had not been announced while Singh was allowed to appeal – and then dropped its case against the Fijian based on updating information on the spray from the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Singh then sued the PGA Tour. The lawsuit is pending.

Patel, 24, is from Bakersfield, California, and played college golf at Fresno State.

HONOLULU – Adam Hadwin will resume his first full season on the PGA Tour out of his comfort zone.

The native of Moose Jaw, Sask., now living in Abbotsford, B.C., tees it up Thursday at the Sony Open in Hawaii, the Tour’s first full-field event of 2015 that comes following nearly a two-month break. Hadwin will be one of five Canadians in the field – joining David Hearn of Brantford, Ont., Nick Taylor, a Winnipeg native now living in Abbotsford, Graham DeLaet of Weyburn, Sask., and Calgary native Roger Sloan – as American Jimmy Walker defends his title.

But Hadwin will have to get used to more than just the five-hour time difference in Hawaii.

“It feels weird to start my season this quickly,” Hadwin said during a conference call Wednesday. “Normally I’ve got another month before I start.

“I went home for Christmas for a week, then straight back down to Phoenix and right back into it. I’ve been working hard in Phoenix since Dec. 28th. The reason I worked so hard was a pretty good reason, to play on the PGA Tour.”

Hadwin will play the full 2014-15 season after topping the Web.com Tour money list last year. The 27-year-old opened the campaign on a solid note, making the cut in four of the five events he entered, finishing tied for 10th at the $6.2-million US Shriners Hospital for Children Open in Las Vegas in October.

But Hadwin didn’t kick back and enjoy himself over the break. With longtime coach Brett Saunders heading to Australia to visit family, Hadwin said he had to get in as much work with Saunders as possible before his departure. After spending Christmas with family, Hadwin went to Phoenix and resumed preparing for the resumption of the Tour schedule.

Still, after a hectic ’14 campaign, Hadwin said the time off – while limited – was certainly welcomed.

“I was definitely drained, I was ready for a break,” he said. “There wasn’t a whole lot of time to enjoy the 2014 year and what went on.

“By the end of Mexico (the OHL Classic at Playa del Carmen, which ended Nov. 16), I was ready to put some distance between me and my clubs for a while.”

Hadwin resumes play at No. 100 in the Tour rankings and 682 points behind FedEx Cup leader Robert Streb.

“I think I got off to an OK start,” Hadwin said. “I really struggled with my game the first part but the one thing I learned was when I didn’t feel my best I was able to kind of hang in there, make the cut and get to the weekend and once you do that you never know what could happen.

“You might find lightning in a bottle and jump into a top-10 like I did in Vegas. I was really proud that in the first five events I was able to do that.”

Hadwin, who had two wins on the Web.com Tour, was recently named as Canada’s top male golfer for 2014 by the Golf Journalist’s Association of Canada. But Hadwin hasn’t set personal goals over the remainder of the PGA Tour.

Instead, his focus will be on matters he can control.

“I’m not a huge goal-setter, especially not sort of outcome goals – things like I want to keep my card or I want to be in the top-50,” he said. “Those are very dependant on how others play.

“This year I’m just more focused on making sure I am as prepared as I can be for each event. I want to be a little bit better with my time management so that I’m doing everything each week that I need to do in order to be prepared for that event, scheduling enough time to get into the gym to stretch out and loosen my body and do all those things. If I can take care of the things I can control and prepare on and off the golf course then I’m going to set myself up to be successful. From there it’s anybody’s guess on how far I can take this.”

And although Hadwin is living out his dream of playing on the PGA Tour, he says his life hasn’t changed.

“I’m still doing the same things, I’m still friends with the same people, still hanging out and enjoying my life,” he said. “Obviously things on the course have changed a little bit, we’re playing bigger events, more people are watching.

“But life off the course hasn’t changed.”

HONOLULU – The PGA Tour already has banned the caddie races on the infamous par-3 16th hole at the Phoenix Open. Next on the taboo list: tossing items to fans in the grandstands at golf’s rowdiest hole.

A notice was posted in the locker room Tuesday at Waialae that said, “At this year’s Waste Management Phoenix open, for fan safety reasons, players and caddies are prohibited from throwing, kicking or otherwise propelling items into the crowd on the 16th hole.”

Someone wrote on the top of the notice, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

Um, no.

Players won’t be able to claim ignorance. Andy Pazder, the tour’s chief of operations, said the notice would be posted at the TPC Scottsdale, in the tent on the tee boxes before a player starts his round and even on the electronic scoreboard on the 16 hole.

How it gets enforced is another matter. Pazder made a small clarification by using the word “indiscriminately” throwing objects. In recent years, Rickie Fowler has tossed hats into the grandstand and Bubba Watson is becoming famous for the swag he throws into the bleachers. What first got the tour’s attention was Padraig Harrington kicking a football into the stands. That’s now forbidden.

Pazder said a direct handoff is fine.

“If a player is going by handing them out or flipping them to someone in the first row, that’s fine,” he said. “But not going by throwing things like a Frisbee.”

At issue was safety, much like how the NFL bans players from heaving a football into the stands after a touchdown.

“A fan in public seating in a mad scramble to get a hat is going to hurt himself, or land on top of another person,” he said. “I would say to the players, `Think about the liability.'”

Pazder said he has talked to Watson, among other players, and didn’t receive too much pushback. But as the handwritten addition to the notice indicated, he’s aware the tour will get criticized as the “No Fun Police.”

As if the Phoenix Open isn’t rowdy enough, Tiger Woods is playing the tournament Jan. 29-Feb. 1 for the first time since 2001.

KAPALUA, Hawaii – No one in the winners-only field at Kapalua has been more successful on Monday than Patrick Reed.

Instead of honing his game in the minor leagues before earning a card, Reed tried to Monday qualify into PGA Tour events. He made it six times out of eight tries, an astounding rate of success. Only this day was different.

Reed didn’t get into a PGA Tour event on Monday. He won a PGA Tour event.

“I felt like this win was more like the Mondays, because not only was it Monday, it was 18 holes,” Reed said after his playoff victory over Jimmy Walker in the Hyundai Tournament of Champions. “It was pretty bunched, so you just had to go out and go low. And luckily, we were able to do that.”

He did his most important work at Kapalua over the final four holes in regulation, and it wasn’t exactly bunched up at the moment. In fact, Reed was thinking more about trying to finish second when he stood on the 15th tee four shots behind Walker.

“I thought my chances were slim,” Reed said. “So I was just thinking to myself, `Let’s try to birdie three of the last four and get ourselves a chance to secure second alone, and give ourselves a chance – just maybe.”

The 24-year-old Reed did better than that. He two-putted the par-5 15th for a birdie. In the final group behind him, Walker began losing his lead when a 4-iron off the tee at the reachable par-4 14th sailed right into a bunker and led to bogey. And then, Reed holed out with a wedge from 80 yards for eagle on the 16th.

Just like that, he was tied with Walker at 21-under.

“I walked to 17 tee and I heard that Jimmy was at 21 (under) as well,” Reed said. “I was like, `Oh, wow.'”

He still had work left. Reed three-putted from 100 feet just off the 17th green, missing a 4-foot par putt to fall one shot behind. Again, he figured a birdie was mandatory to at least have a chance. He took care of that with a two-putt from 80 feet to close at 6-under 67.

Walker, tied for the lead with Hideki Matsuyama at the start of the final round, would take only one shot back – the 4-iron into the bunker on the 14th. From there, he caught it too cleanly and sailed the green, and when he missed a short par putt, he ended his streak of 32 straight holes without a bogey.

Equally critical to Walker was making birdies, and those were elusive. He had built a three-shot lead over Matsuyama by running off three straight around the turn, and he was still three clear over the 22-year-old from Japan going to the 14th. Walker twice missed birdie putts inside 10 feet. And when he needed a birdie on the 18th to win in regulation, his chip came out soft and he missed an 18-foot attempt for a 69 to join Reed at 21-under 271.

Walker had the advantage in the playoff on the downhill, scenic par-5 18th, but not for long. Reed couldn’t get near the green after driving into the rough, while Walker left his 3-wood well out to the right, not far from his chip in regulation. This one came out hot and over the green. He chipped back to 6 feet for a par putt, only he picked up his coin when Reed drained an 18-footer for birdie and the win.

“It was there for me to win,” Walker said. “It was a bummer I didn’t close the door on it.”

Reed has been doing that with regularity since he joined the PGA Tour in 2013. He won in Greensboro in a playoff over Jordan Spieth. He went wire-to-wire at the Humana Challenge last year, and beat back a strong field at Doral. This was his fourth career victory, putting him in elite company.

Only four other players in the last quarter-century have won four PGA Tour titles before turning 25 – Rory McIlroy, Sergio Garcia, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Reed is still not “top five in the world” – a comment he made after his win at Doral and one that follows him now. He moved to a career-best No. 14, which marks progress and potential.

“Everyone is trying to get to the best in the world,” Reed said. “But that’s going to take a long time. It’s nothing that happens overnight.”

The lone Canadian in the field this week was Nick Taylor. The Abbotsford, B.C., native finished tied for 29th at 6-under par 286.

KAPALUA, Hawaii – Jimmy Walker and Hideki Matsuyama are tied for the lead going into the final round of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.

Matsuyama matched the best score of the week Sunday with a 7-under 66. He made three straight birdies on the front nine and back nine, and closed with a delicate pitch down the slope to 2 feet for birdie on the par-5 18th.

Walker began to pull away with five birdies in 10 holes. But he didn’t make another birdie until a 4-foot putt on the last hole for a 67. They were tied at 17-under 202.

Bae Sang-Moon (69) and Patrick Reed (68) were two shots behind. Defending champion Zach Johnson, among four players tied for the lead, stumbled to a 73 and was six shots behind.

Canada’s Nick Taylor has a share of 27th after a 1-under 72 Sunday. The Abbosford, B.C. native is heading into the final round 5-under par.