2014 Valero Texas Open results: Steven Bowditch win is an amazing story for PGA Tour

Steven Bowditch, who spent years working through crippling clinical depression and still battles it today, is into the Masters as the 30-year-old Aussie got his first PGA Tour win Sunday at the Valero Texas Open. It's an awesome story for any golf or sports fan, even though few know about or have ever heard of Bowditch.

The Aussie had won three times in his native country, but worked his way through the Web.com Tour and overcame a stretch of repeated withdrawals and disqualifications because of his depression. As this profile from Golf Digest's Jim Moriarty notes, there have been different stretches where Bowditch couldn't sleep (once he went 12 nights), binge drank through the nights and up to his tee times, disappeared and walked off the course, and an attempted suicide in 2006 (you should read the profile in Golf Digest). He's an Aussie from a working-class background with legendary talent Down Under, but it's been a rough and long trip to his first win. It made Sunday afternoon that much easier to pick out a favorite to root on at TPC San Antonio.

The conditions were brutal in San Antonio on Sunday, with the final pairing of Bowditch, Matt Kuchar and Andrew Loupe taking turns making a mess on the front nine. They all dropped shots to tumble, but the rest of the field was dealing with the same high winds and slippery greens to post almost exclusively numbers over par. After three straight rounds in the 60s, Bowditch played his first four holes in 3-over to allow Kuchar to pull even. It was a startlingly quick way to give away the three-shot lead he started with, but those crooked numbers caught up to Kuchar as well.

Bowditch, ranked 339th in the world at the start of the week, set aside those early struggles, and held on to fire a 37 coming into the clubhouse to get in at 8-under. He hit just 18 greens-in-regulation on the entire weekend, but his chipping, and not his ability to bomb it off the tee, pushed him to the win. Sunday was such a tough day that his final-round 76 was enough to give him a comfortable cushion on the 18th hole, a rare final round number for a winner.

The last winner of a non-major to shoot 76 or higher in the final round was Fred Couples, who carded a 77 at the 1983 Kemper Open.

— Rob Bolton (@RobBoltonGolf) March 30, 2014

He's now the third Aussie to win on the PGA Tour this season, joining his good friend John Senden and Jason Day. Bowditch has played in just one major championship in his career, a missed cut at the 2003 British Open, but now he's headed to the Masters in less than two weeks. Like Matt Every last week, it's an awesome story for the PGA Tour and for golf.

Here are the final results from the field that made the cut at the Texas Open: