Wolverhampton-born Aaron Rai tees up £32k cheque

The 23-year-old former Wolverhampton Grammar School pupil ended the tournament on one over par. Staffordshire’s Robert Rock was two shots further back in tied 51st place and collected just over £26,000 for his efforts.

The tournament was won by England’s Danny Willett on 18 under, who pocketed just over £1million. It capped a remarkable turnaround for the 2016 US Masters champion who had suffered a dramatic loss of form since then.

Willett drew on the memories his memorable 2016 Masters triumph to secure an emotional victory.

It had been 953 long days since Willett won the Masters and - as he had not tasted victory since winning that first major title at Augusta National in April 2016 – he had slumped from a career-high of ninth to outside the world’s top 450 earlier this season.

But after overcoming numerous injuries and a subsequent loss of form, the 31-year-old from Sheffield carded a final round of 68 at Jumeirah Golf Estates to finish 18 under par, two shots ahead of fellow Englishman Matt Wallace and current Masters champion Patrick Reed.

“Regardless of what would have happened, I’m in a much better place than where I was,” said Willett, who will climb from 276th in the world to back inside the top 100.

“I knew that things were going the right way and I was doing all the work possible to give myself chances to do this.

“Winning’s a rarity on Tour, really. I’m pleased to have won the tournaments that I’ve won over the last few years. I’ve won some pretty big ones and obviously Augusta is always going to be special.

“But this, coming back after everything that’s happened is going to go down in the history books for myself as one of the most pleasing.”

He added: “The back end of 2016 we were in prime position to win the Race to Dubai and picked up a couple of bad injuries, the golf game wasn’t in a good place and I didn’t really want to play golf.

“I wasn’t in a position to where I was enjoying what I was doing and I was in pain.

“We set out to be pain-free and we would then put the golf right after that.”