Search for a golf course, city, state or zip code:

Puerto Rico Open Finally Comes to Close

Though it took an extra day and a bunch of disjointed rounds, the 72-hole Puerto Rico Open came up with a winner on Monday. PGA Tour rookie Derek Lamely closed with a 6-under 66 to finish at 19-under 269 on the Trump International Golf Club in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, for his first PGA Tour victory.

Lamely, a resident of Fort Myers, Fla., earned $630,000 along with 250 FedEx Cup points and exempt status on the PGA Tour for the rest of this year and through 2012.

The 29-year-old graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University and Illinois native edged out Kris Blanks (69) by two shots. Four players - Brandon de Jonge (68), Kevin Streelman (73), Steve Wheatcroft (70) and James Nitties (69) ended up tied for third at 272.

After his round Monday afternoon, Lamely met with reporters and discussed what his first victory means to him.

Q.: What's the difference from the Nationwide and PGA tours?

DEREK LAMELY: You know, the learning curve is different now. When you screw up, you could sit there either right then on the golf course or that night and go, okay, this was wrong or that was wrong or maybe nothing was wrong. You can sit there and you can look back and you have more time to think about it and you're not in the heat of the moment. Then you can kind of look at it and diagnose what was what, and you can kind of use it for good or bad. And that's the biggest thing, you know. I think the learning curve is huge.

Q. Do you have family or friends that came down to be with you?

DEREK LAMELY: I wish. I wish. Actually my girl friend flew into Fort Myers yesterday, and I thought we were going to be home, and she wanted to come down. She was like, I'll come down, and I was like, I'll be home Sunday night, not knowing I was going to be here a whole day later. So she wishes she was here. I wish my parents were here, but not much we can do about it.

Q. Can you describe the whole week?

DEREK LAMELY: You know, I played last year. I really like it here. I mean the whole week was good. It gets a little trying at times this week, but you know, I went fishing the one day. Actually I went fishing two days.

Q. Really?

DEREK LAMELY: Yeah. I went fishing right here at the golf course. I went fishing for a couple days. So instead of sitting around worrying about the rain, I went fishing.

Q. Did you catch any?

DEREK LAMELY: I caught some snook and I hooked into a couple tarpon. I didn't get any, though. You know, that's the great thing about fishing, when I go fishing, it's like nothing else really matters. Like golf is like the farthest thing from my mind.

Q. When you sum up your week here, would your first thought be about the rain?

DEREK LAMELY: You know, really with how the weather was, you couldn't ask for a better week really. I mean the golf course dried up a lot every day, you know, played better every day. And the greens were still somewhat firm, sort of. I mean considering how wet the rest of the golf course was, they were definitely firmer than the rest of the golf course. So I think it still made the golf course playable. But everybody did -- I mean I can't even imagine how much work it took to get the golf course playable. I mean they did a great job.

Q. For you, is this one of your best performances?

DEREK LAMELY: My best performance. Yeah. In ways, yes and in ways, no. I think being in the moment, I think, you know, especially from last year playing Nationwide and having three or four chances to win, it really helped me for today, you know, really kind of just playing golf and not thinking about outcome.

Q. You're one ahead of the other players, so just waiting.

DEREK LAMELY: Either way I'm going to have a good week. So no matter what happens, it's still a good week.

Q. You finished on hole No. 9?

DEREK LAMELY: I thought it was kind of fun actually.

Q. What?

DEREK LAMELY: Because it's weird we aren't supposed to finish on 9. I thought it was kind of funny.

Q. You had the gallery out there.

DEREK LAMELY: Yeah. They all came up the last four holes to go. There was no one and then there was a few people.

Q. It was fun; right?

DEREK LAMELY: Yeah.

Q. On 9 what were you hitting when you lopped it in? There was two palm trees there.

DEREK LAMELY: 8-iron.

The transcript for the above interview is courtesy of ASAP Sports.

('’)