With a slight breeze at his back on the par-4, 483-yard 17th, he cracked it past 350.

“Sometimes you just hit ’em,” Chambers said. “I really did like how I was hitting my driver today. Some days you just get into that groove where you’re hitting them harder and harder and they’re going straight.”

Blake Garland, who sat in fourth place going into the final round, grabbed second with a final-round 74. He finished at 213, six shots behind Chambers.

“It was a tough day,” Garland said. “This golf course is really hard. It was long before, but they’ve made it even longer now … And it’s never easy playing against Nathan Chambers.”

Artman and Purcell, who were in the final group with Chambers, finished tied for fourth place at 215 and J.R. Hurley was third at 214 after a final-round 72, the only other par-or-better round on the day besides Chambers’ 1-under.

The story of the weekend was the heat, though, and temperatures once again soared above 100 degrees.

But as many golfers pointed out, it was the same for everyone.

“You get used to (the heat) playing here in Oklahoma,” Garland said. “It’s fair for everybody. We all have to play through it.”

Chambers didn’t even get to enjoy his victory very long. Just 20 minutes after his round ended, he was off to Tulsa for the Oklahoma Golf Association’s stroke play tournament.

“It’s another three days in the heat,” he said.

Jeff Johncox

366-3535

jjohncox@normantranscript.com