A week that started with 59 was never going to end with anything but glory.
Woody Austin finished off a wire-to-wire win at the Diamond Resorts Invitational Sunday, cruising to the title in the modified Stableford format at Tranquilo Golf Club in Lake Buena Vista, Florida
But Austin wasn’t the only victor on this fine day. The Diamond Resorts Invitational is a compound tournament, with 27 US PGA Tour Champions and four LPGA pros competing for a $750,000 purse while 47 celebrities vie for a $500,000 purse in a separate competition.
Austin won the affair among the pros, but the celebrity portion belonged to Mark Mulder, a former ace for the Oakland A’s and St. Louis Cardinals.
     In fact the duo played together the last two rounds of the 54-hole event, which afforded an added comfort on both sides.
Mulder said watching the smooth tempo of a PGA Tour Champions player in Austin helped him calm down his own swing. It helped even more to watch Austin only miss one of 14 fairways Sunday.
“When you see that first ball (in the group) go down the middle, it’s amazing what that does for me, letting me hit my tee shot, and the good vibes that almost gives me going next,” Mulder said.
The calming feeling was mutual.
Austin began the week with an incredible 43-point round Friday. How good is that? In standard strokes, it added up to a 59, just a day after Justin Thomas recorded his at the PGA Tour’s Sony Open.
While this tournament is an unofficial PGA Tour Champions event, making this 59 an unofficial one, it got Austin, who only started practicing last week after resting due to offseason hernia surgery, revved up and in command from the start, as he took a nine-point lead over Joe Durant through Round 1.
His final margin would be eight points, as he’d acquire 104 points (with 31 coming on the final day) over 54 holes, with Durant second at 96.
How did Mulder help Austin, though? While the celebrities generally don’t stack up to the pro golfers on the links, the three-time PGA Tour Champions winner in 2016 felt Mulder held his own, which aided Austin’s own play.
“Even though it’s a fun format and it’s an enjoyable format, you still want to stay in rhythm … When you’re playing with somebody else who even may be supposedly a celebrity or whatever but they play just as good as you do, it makes it a lot easier to just kind of keep in your own game.”
Austin’s own game was one of supreme ease. It was a sizable lead all the way through the week and he said he put himself in solid positions throughout Sunday. The only green he didn’t find was on No. 18, and his sole missed fairway came at No. 9 … because he actually hit it too far and the ball bounded through the short grass.
Mulder, on the other hand, began the final round three points behind NBA legend Ray Allen. Mulder’s move into the lead really became apparent when he chipped in for eagle at Tranquilo’s par-5 seventh.
He followed by birdieing the eighth, but he then hit it in the water at No. 9. And that’s where his biggest moment of the day arose.
Mulder left himself about 20 feet for par from off the green after finding that trouble. He drained the putt.
“It just allowed me to relax, right when I was kind of getting those nerves again,” Mulder said. “That par putt was bigger than anything.”
Three holes later he made a similar length putt for eagle, and he wouldn’t be caught from there.