Matt Wallace secured a statement maiden victory on the PGA Tour to significantly boost his chances of Ryder Cup selection.
The Englishman ended a near-five year wait for a win with a superb finish to edge out Denmark's Nicolai Hojgaard at the Corales Puntacana Championship in the Dominican Republic.
A scintillating final-round 66 included a surge of four straight birdies from the 13th as Wallace set an imposing target of 19-under down the closing stretch.
Fellow Ryder Cup hopeful Hojgaard then missed a birdie putt to force a play-off on the 18th and Wallace was left to revel in his first tournament victory since September 2018.
Wallace pocketed a cool $684,000 (£557,000) winners cheque for the breakthrough triumph and is hitting form just at the right time ahead of a critical juncture in the season.
He now has a shot at qualifying for The Masters by winning this week's Valero Texas Open, and has jumped from 175th to 117th in the world rankings.
The resurgence also crucially lifts Wallace's name into the Ryder Cup reckoning after he agonisingly missed out on Thomas Bjorn's team for Europe's win in Paris five years ago.
He is targeting his debut in the biennial showdown with the US in Rome later this year and is already firmly in the thoughts of captain Luke Donald after being selected for the inaugural Hero Cup in January.
Up to 22nd in the European qualification World standings, Wallace can now be seriously considered among the contenders for one of Donald's six wildcard picks.
And Wallace revealed that he had spoken to his potential skipper before the tournament as the duo discussed the course layout at the Corales Golf Club.
“I actually spoke to Luke last week to see if he knew about this golf course and said it was relatively wide off the tee. It wasn't his style of golf as he likes the tight tests.
“I was like ‘yeah, it's kind of similar to myself, I like the really tough golf courses’, but actually when I got here I was like maybe it's a good thing for me at the moment. My driving was really good this week because I probably had that space.”
He added: “That was awesome, down those final few holes was brilliant and I'm really proud of myself to get through that.”
