Alex Noren closes with 62 to win BMW PGA Championship

At the start of the final round in the European Tour’s flagship event, the Swede was so far back he may as well have been playing in the 2016 championship.

By the end of a peculiar afternoon, though, he had overturned a seven stroke deficit and had won quite comfortably as all and sundry wheezed over the finishing line.

Noren’s rousing 10-under 62, which was a new course record over the expensively revamped layout, was the kind of finish that grandstands were invented for but even he must have thought that those at the sharp end who still had nine holes to play when he trotted out of the recorder’s hut could overhaul him.

They couldn’t. Indeed, the sight of a quite shimmering score being posted up on the leaderboards seemed to knock the stuffing out of those fighting it out for supremacy. As the rain came on, they all became rather downbeat and drookit. Noren, meanwhile, was home and dry.

His 11-under aggregate of 277 was an imposing clubhouse target and the rest couldn’t match it.

The 34-year-old sat in the players’ lounge twiddling his thumbs into calloused stumps until he got his fingers wrapped around one of the most cherished prizes in the European game.

Noren’s overturning of those seven shots equalled the tournament record for the biggest comeback set by Simon Khan in 2010 and Rory McIlroy in 2014.

In terms of a salvage operation, he may be getting a call from the hattered high heid yins at British Airways to see if he can haul them back from the depths.

Having won the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart last summer, Noren embarked on a purposeful and profitable surge which brought three more wins before the end of the season.

This was his fifth victory since last July, and third on UK soil, and one which will propel him into the top-10 of the updated world rankings.

“It is amazing and crazy,” said Noren as he reflected on a bamboozling unravelling of affairs which ended with him collecting a tidy cheque for £894,000. “It feels a bit unreal.”

Noren had teed-off in the final round still harbouring a sense of simmering anger.

A closing double-bogey during Saturday’s third round was a real scunner but he responded with considerable gusto and launched a fearsome assault on a benign day that was certainly conducive to attacking golf.

“I had no intention of trying to win this in the morning,” he added. “I came off the course on Saturday quite angry after playing a good round and ruining it by chipping into the water on the last.”

Noren took those lingering frustrations out on the West Course. He birdied three of his first four holes as he raced to the turn in 31 but he really got the foot to the floor on the inward half.

A trio of gains at the 12th, 13th and 14th kept him barging his way up the order and, after another birdie at the 16th, Noren, with the adrenaline flowing through him, clattered a superbly flighted 5-iron into a few feet on the 18th and rolled in the eagle putt.

“After that birdie on 12 I knew things were going well,” he said. “I had adrenaline mixed with focus and I was in the zone. You start forgetting about this and that. You just think about doing it today, there is no tomorrow.”

Noren had made a significant statement of intent. Now he could kick back and watch events unfold.

Shane Lowry had powered to the turn in 30 to join a clustered pack but his title tilt faded with a couple of late double bogeys.

Henrik Stenson, the reigning Open champion, was also in the merry midst of the scrap for the crown after nine holes as was Andrew Dodt, Branden Grace and Hideto Tanihari but they too couldn’t answer the question that has been posed by Noren.

Nicolas Colsaerts, meanwhile, was another of the early starters and he made sizeable gains with an eventful 65 which eventually left him a tie for third, a shot behind Francesco Molinari who took the runners-up spot with a late brace of birdies in a 68.