England’s Chris Wood has targeted a Ryder Cup debut after holding his nerve to secure the biggest win of his career in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
Wood carded a closing 69 to finish nine under par, a shot ahead of Sweden’s Rikard Karlberg, whose 65 included a hole-in-one on the second.
The 28-year-old from Bristol started the day three shots off the lead held by Australia’s Scott Hend, but fired an eagle and four birdies to race to the turn in 29 and match the tournament record set by Masters champion Danny Willett on Friday.
And despite almost letting slip a four-shot lead with a nervy back nine of 40, Wood held on to earn the first prize of £637,000 and move into the automatic qualifying places for Hazeltine, as well as climbing from 54th in the world to a career-high position inside the top 25.
“All I wanted this season was to give myself a chance to try and qualify for the Ryder Cup and this has done that,” said Wood, who moves to third in the European points list, around 300,000 euros short of the amount which gave Jamie Donaldson the final qualifying berth in 2014.
“There are three or four months where other players can win big events and overtake me, so I have to keep pushing and pushing.”
A place in the Olympics is also possible after closing the gap on Willett and Justin Rose in the rankings, although Wood joked: “My stag do is the week of the Olympics. We could possibly postpone that but not the wedding which is the week after.”
The last two groups of Hend, Tyrrell Hatton, Lee Westwood and YE Yang were a combined 16 over par for the final day, with Hend on course to shoot in the 80s until a birdie on the 16th and eagle on the par-five 17th.
That left Willett alone in third after a closing 71 which rounded off what the world number nine labelled a “topsy-turvy” week.
“The game’s not been there,” Willett said. “It’s a work in progress and there’s glimpses of really good, and then there’s obviously little sections that are very bad. I think a couple of weeks off before US Open is going to do me some good.
“Looking at the scores now, we could have made it really close today if we would have got going and put the foot down but we just had too many mistakes. A top five is all right, but obviously you’re working hard to try and win.”
