Gana stamps his passport from Chile to Augusta

Toto Gana hit what he described as the "best shot in my whole life," a wedge to three feet for a birdie to win the Latin America Amateur Championship on Sunday and earn a trip to the Masters in April.

His best shot produced his biggest trophy.

Asked what his greatest achievement in golf was before his victory in Panama, the 19-year-old from Chile said: "I didn't have any achievements, to be honest. I had won a couple of tournaments at home when I was really, really young."

The Latin America Amateur completed its third year, a stroke-play tournament created by Augusta National, the USGA and the Royal & Ancient to spur growth in that part of the world. It follows the successful launch of the Asia Pacific Amateur.

The Asia Pacific is producing a higher pedigree of champions - Hideki Matsuyama won twice, and the winner last year was Curtis Luck, the reigning US Amateur champion.

The last two Latin America winners were surprises - Gana and 16-year-old Paul Chaplet of Costa Rica last year.

The other was Chilean Matias Dominguez, who was a junior at Texas Tech.

Gana said the only hard part about his victory was beating compatriot Joaquin Niemann, one of his best friends who won the Junior World in 2015 at Torrey Pines.

"I really never thought I could win this tournament because all the other players have won many other tournaments, very big tournaments," Gana said.

"What I did was keep a cool head. When I saw that I had a chance to win, I believed in myself that I could do. And I gave it my all."

Chile will have a player represented at Augusta National for the second time in three years. The only other Chilean to compete at the Masters was Enrique Orellana, who missed the cut in 1964.

Gana has flair, and he showed how much passion he has for golf when explaining how he got started.

"When I was a little boy, eight years old, my stepfather taught me to play golf on the practice range," he said. "When I shot a really nice shot, I never quit."

Gana will attend Lynn University in Florida.

Blooming start

Justin Rose played the Sony Open as part of the new "strength of field" regulation on the PGA Tour that requires players who played fewer than 25 events last year to add a tournament they had not played in four years.

The Englishman was so excited about this year that he might have started earlier if he had been eligible.

Last season he failed to win a PGA Tour event for the first time since 2009. But in a year slowed by injury, Rose geared himself for golf's return to the Olympics and won the gold medal in Rio de Janeiro.

That was worth an exemption into the four majors, but the PGA Tour did not offer a spot in the SBS Tournament of Champions.

"I didn't inquire," Rose said about Kapalua. "But in my mind, I was surprised that it didn't count in a way, just because, why wouldn't it? It's a one-off thing."

He thought maybe the tour would only give a spot to Kapalua if the gold medalist was already a PGA Tour member, much like it treated the HSBC Champions early on in its World Golf Championships history.

Rose chuckled, however, when he realized his history in Hawaii.

"It's funny enough, I don't have the right to say I should have been at Kapalua," he said. "I've won six years in a row but I've only been here once."

A birdie on the final hole at the Sony Open gave him second place alone, which was worth $648,000.

Dufner's driving force

Jason Dufner is the defending champion at the CareerBuilder Challenger, where he won last year for the first time since the 2013 PGA Championship at Oak Hill.

What changed? Very little.

Dufner attributed the drought to a neck and shoulder injury that he suffered at the 2014 Masters.

He tried to play through it all year until he was forced to pull out of his PGA Championship defense at Valhalla, which kept him off the Ryder Cup team. Playing with the injury led to bad swing habits, too many memories of bad shots and, eventually, shattered confidence.

"People don't realize, once you start playing, you have to redo everything," Dufner said. "You see it with a lot of guys coming back. It takes them six, eight, 12 months. I spent 2015 trying to get back to where I was."

Where he wants to be is one of the top ball-strikers in the game. As for putting? He manages.

Dufner has finished no higher than No 143 in the key putting statistic over the past four years, and while he has to pay attention to his setup, it's not as though he's going to abandon what got him here (his swing) to pour everything into becoming Jordan Spieth.

"I've been putting badly for 17 years," he said.

"It's tough to change. I can hit it good enough to make up for it. I'll wait for my weeks where I putt good and try to win."