I THINK THE BIGGEST THING THIS SAYS TO ME IS I CAN GET IT DONE. I CAN COME UP WITH THE BIG SHOT OR THE BIG PUTT WHEN I NEED TO.

Hadwin birdied the 16th and 17th holes at the PGA West Stadium Course to push Swafford and, after driving into the rough on 18, made a clutch 11-foot par putt to finish alone in second place. Hadwin collected a cheque for US$626,400, his biggest payday since he burst to prominence in the 2011 RBC Canadian Open at Shaughnessy, in Vancouver, where he tied for fourth four years before he became a PGA Tour regular.

Adam Hadwin isn’t going to be one-and-done. His progress in golf has been steady if unspectacular. After learning to win on the Vancouver Golf Tour and the mini-tour Fraser Mulholland runs for local club and tour pros, Hadwin played his way through the Canadian and Web.com tours before earning fulltime status on the PGA Tour for the 2015 season.

He survived his rookie year and kept his card by finishing 107th in the points standings, then moved to 85th last year. He is 10th early this season — the quirky 2017 PGA Tour schedule began last fall — and his second place in La Quinta was Hadwin’s fourth straight top-30 finish.

He is ranked 25th in total putting and 53rd in total driving and is 12th on the money list with US$922,500 in official earnings.

Nobody shoots 59 without luck, but this tournament was not a fluke for Hadwin.

“I wasn’t nervous going out (with the lead) Sunday morning,” he said. “You always get first-tee jitters and stuff like that. But I was very comfortable.

“I’d put myself in positions to have a chance to win golf tournaments and just sputtered out. I wasn’t able to hit the shot when I needed to or make the putt when I needed to. I think the biggest thing this says to me is I can get it done. I can come up with the big shot or the big putt when I need to. I felt like I knew this was there deep down, but I hadn’t quite proven it yet.

“To still have a chance to win coming up 18 was big for me. Now I know I can kind of do it. And how I felt on the golf course on Sunday … I was thinking clearly, thinking the right things. I was never worried what others were doing. This will help me immensely moving forward.”

Hadwin reiterated that the support he received from the many Canadians in the Palm Springs area made the weekend even more special for him.

“My phone just blew up Saturday night,” he said of his 59. “These next few days I’m going to try to get back to everyone. What happened on Saturday is still sinking in, and probably I won’t fully realize it until I have downtime to think about it, that I’m part of history, one of the few men to do this.”

And one determined not to be entirely defined by it.