Golf: Rose hangs on to win in Pennsylvania

JUSTIN ROSE held his nerve to triumph by one shot at the AT&T National in Pennsylvania last night for his second PGA Tour win in five weeks.

The Englishman, who took a four-shot lead into the final round, carded a level-par 70 to finish on ten under – a stroke clear of Ryan Moore (65), two ahead of Jeff Overton (67) and three better than Charlie Wi (69).

Rose broke his PGA Tour duck at the 162nd attempt at the Memorial Tournament last month, but squandered a three-shot final-day lead at the Travelers Championship in Ohio last week. That collapse looked to be playing on his mind in the early stages of Sunday's round and four birdies by Moore on the back nine had the American in the clubhouse on nine under with Rose still having two holes to play, but the 29-year-old parred both to clinch the title.

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"This was an important day for me," he said. "I knew having not closed out last week it was important for me just for myself to do it today, but to do it in a way I felt like I really did put into play the lessons I learned at Hartford.

"I played much slower and I really felt calm. I didn't feel like the nerves got the better of me at all the whole weekend, so I was much better at that.

"It's still never easy to close these things out. I had it going nicely on the front nine and probably got a little bit closer than I should have with two slack three-putts, ten and 11.

"But I knew around level par would get the job done.

Tiger Woods produced a final-round 71, with four bogeys and three birdies, to finish with a four-over-par 284 for a share of 46th spot.

The world No.1 was never in contention in Pennsylvania after an opening round of 73, but nevertheless was taking positives into next week's Open Championship at St Andrews.

"I'm really excited," he said. "I've driven the ball better this week than I have in a very long time. It's fun to hit the driver that way. I hit driver as many times as I possibly could because it felt so good. That hasn't been the case lately. So it was nice to get back dialled in (but] obviously I need to get my putter working a little bit better and get rolling."