Lawrie finds foul-weather friend

FORMER Open champion Paul Lawrie, who lost out in a play-off last year, went one better with a commanding victory in the weather-disrupted Celtic Manor Resort Wales Open today.

Lawrie carded two rounds of 70 on the final day after fog, rain and lightning on Friday again played havoc with the £1.1million tournament.

It gave the 33-year-old Scot a 16-under total of 272 and five-shot winning margin over John Bickerton, the midlander’s fourth second-place finish.

Former British amateur champion Mikko Ilonen from Finland was a shot further back in third, with South African Martin Maritz and Australian Lucas Parsons another stroke adrift in fourth.

Lawrie, who lost out in a three-way sudden-death play-off for the title last year when heavy rain reduced the event to 36 holes, picked up the winner’s cheque for £183,000 and a timely confidence boost ahead of next week’s USPGA Championship.

‘‘I’m so tired you wouldn’t believe,’’ admitted Lawrie after playing 36 holes on Sunday on the steeply undulating Wentwood Hills course which will undergo major changes before hosting the Ryder Cup in 2010. ‘‘I’m knackered.

‘‘This morning I struggled to finish and again this afternoon was the same. Before I started working out six or eight months ago I probably would not have got round. It’s stood me in good stead.’’

The victory enhanced Lawrie’s unwanted reputation as a bad-weather golfer. His first tour win in the 1996 Open Catalonia came when the tournament was reduced to 36 holes because of high winds.

He did master the Shamal winds in Qatar to win over 72 holes in 1999 before his famous win in the windswept Open at Carnoustie a few months later, and won the Dunhill Links Championship last year when more bad weather forced the tournament into a fifth day.

Even his win in last week’s Scottish Matchplay Championship was delayed by bad weather, the final moved from Deeside because of flooding to his native Aberdeen, only to be delayed by fog.

‘‘I don’t see myself any better in the wind and rain than anyone else,’’ said Lawrie, who admitted his course record-equalling 65 in the second round, spread over two days, was the key to victory.

‘‘I’d like to think I’m capable of playing in brilliant sunshine but I do tend to win when it’s naff.

‘‘I just plod away and my attitude is normally very good when a lot of guys isn’t. I just hope it’s bad weather at Hazeltine next week!’’

Lawrie was one of 18 leading players forced to play 36 holes on Sunday after the knock-on effects of Friday’s delays, the rest of the field starting their third rounds on Saturday evening.

An eagle on the fifth, where he holed a lob wedge from 105 yards, and two birdies took him out in 32 and in complete control, and after another birdie at the 10th he could afford to drop three shots in five holes coming home to card a third-round 70.

That left him five clear of the field and that was as close as anyone got during the final round, a hat-trick of birdies from the second removing any lingering doubt about the outcome.

It meant Bickerton had to settle for second for the fourth time in his career, although he had the consolation of a highest-ever payday of £122,220.

‘‘It is up there with the best performances but I have had a few seconds and they say it is the first loser,’’ said Bickerton.

‘‘But at the end of the day this game is tough.

‘‘I’ve been working hard with golf psychologist John Allsopp and my way of thinking this afternoon compared to this morning was much more positive.

‘‘But I was never going to catch Paul. He was hot today and played lovely golf but it was nice to hang on at the end for second spot.’’

Ireland’s Paul McGinley put up a fine defence of his title in joint sixth, a welcome boost for the Dubliner ahead of his belated Ryder Cup debut next month after he missed the cut in four of his last five events.

‘‘I did need this,’’ admitted McGinley, who would have finished fourth but for a bogey on the last.

‘‘It’s the best I’ve played for quite a while, although there is still a lot of improvement to be made. I will keep working.

“I’ve got two weeks in America now and I’m happy to be taking better form into the next two tournaments.

“Better, but it's still not where I want it to be.’’