Westwood Cruises in Malaysia


Lee Westwood closed with a 4-under 68 to roll to a seven-stroke victory in the Maybank Malaysian Open. The European Tour event took place at Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club.

The 40-year-old Brit, coming off a seventh-place finish in the Masters last week, carded rounds of 65, 66, 71 and 68 for the wire-to-wire victory. He ended up at 18-under 270 to earn his 23rd title on the European Tour and first since the 2012 Nordea Masters.

"It's a golf course that suits my game; it's very tight in certain areas," Westwood said, who added his short game came through this week.

"I feel like I've got a short game and starting to roll a few putts in," he said. "It makes a hell of a difference if you can get up-and-down if you miss a few greens and keep the momentum going."

Bernd Wiesberger (67), Louis Oosthuizen (68) and Nicolas Colsaerts (70) shared second at 11-under, while Danny Willett (70), Rikard Karlberg (70) and Julien Quesne (72) tied for fifth at minus-10.

The final round was delayed for over four hours due to the threat of lightning.

Westwood noted that his recent work with a new instructor, and the return of his former caddie, is paying off. "I started working with a new coach a few weeks ago, Mike Walker, and Billy Foster came back on the bag at the end of last year, so I was going back to what I had done before because it had worked," he said.

"It's started to work already - the last couple of weeks I've played well in Houston and the Masters last week, and this week I've obviously played very well," added Westwood, who also won the tournament in 1997 when it was on the Asian Tour.

Jason Knutson was the highest-finishing American at 7-under 281, good for a tie for 13th.

For all the scores, visit http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2014/tournamentid=2014030/leaderboard/index.html.