More heartbreak for arguably the TOUR's best winless player

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Chris Condon/PGA TOUR

Though unlucky to have two buried lies in the last four holes, Steve Marino's bunker play is one area that could use improvement.

There are all kinds of ways of finish second on the PGA TOUR.

There's the most painful way, where you lead the tournament for most of the week, only to get caught near the end.

ARNOLD PALMER

Laird holds on over Marino
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There's the easier way when you shadow the leader for most of Sunday, but he proved to be too strong, so you tip your cap and gladly settle for the runner-up finish.

There's the back-door way where you're never really in contention but finish strongly, taking advantage of other's collapses to catch all but one of the players ahead of you on the leader board.

In a sense, Steve Marino experienced all of those situations Sunday.

When he started the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational four shots behind leader Martin Laird, tied for third place with Bubba Watson, Marino knew some things would have to go his way to finally record his first PGA TOUR victory after three runner-up finishes in 124 starts.

Little did Marino expect, however, the two players in front of him -- Laird and Spencer Levin -- to play Bay Hill's front nine in a combined 8 over. Marino quickly took advantage, making birdies at the ninth and 10th holes to vault into the lead. Marino's advantage was pushed to three shots when Laird double-bogeyed the 11th after his approach landed in the water.

Was this finally going to be Marino's breakthrough moment on the PGA TOUR?

Nope, it instead turned into another heartbreak.

Marino, a long hitter, failed to birdie the two par-5s (12th and 16th). He bogeyed the 15th when he mistakenly went after a front-pin location and ended up with a fried-egg bunker shot. Then his victory chances unraveled when another buried bunker shot at the par-3 17th led to a costly double bogey.

Marino closed valiantly with an 8-foot birdie at the difficult 18th hole, but that still left him one behind Laird, who birdied both of the par-5s and parred the last two tough holes for his second PGA TOUR win.

"I'm pretty disappointed right now," Marino said. "I felt like I just played so well all day, and just a couple bad breaks, and one bad putt was all it took to kind of take me out of it."

It's not a stretch to say Marino may now be the best player not to have won on the PGA TOUR. Not only was this the fourth runner-up finish for the 31-year-old, but he has now finished in the top 10 21 times -- or an average of more than once for every six starts. That's a very high percentage for someone who has yet to win.

The good news for Marino is his third top-four finish of the year has enabled him to almost surpass his earnings of $1.48 million from a year ago. He's also 12th in the FedExCup standings and his world ranking has improved to a career-best 54th. He is almost in position -- meaning in the top 50 in the world rankings -- to get him into all of golf's most significant events (last year marked the first time he played in all four majors).

The bad news, of course, is his trophy case has plenty of room to fill. Marino knows he has the game to win at golf's highest level. But at some point he has to do it.

"I've felt that way for a long time -- that my game was good enough to win out here," he said. "I felt like that before today. I felt like that last year. I felt like that the year before. It's just hard to win out here.

"Like I was saying the other day, you just cannot afford to (throw) away shots in the final round; really, at any point in the tournament, if you want to win the tournament. Unfortunately on 17, that's exactly what I did. It came back to bite me."

Now comes the next step for Marino: Assessing his game and figuring out how to improve. While he was unlucky to have two balls bury in Bay Hill's soft sand on the last four holes, he also needs to get better in this area. Marino ranks 174th on the TOUR in sand saves, having gotten up-and-down only 35.8 percent (19-of-53) and is 24-over-par in those situations.

This is not a new problem. He ranked 165th in sand saves last year, 147th in 2009 and 149th in 2008. Clearly, this is the one area of Marino's game that's holding him back.

If he could have saved par in one of those situations Sunday, Marino could have been the one being handed the ceremonial sword by host Palmer. Instead, Marino left Bay Hill waiting for another opportunity to close the deal.

His frustration cut like a knife.

Craig Dolch is a freelance columnist for PGATOUR.COM. His views do not necessarily represent the views of the PGA TOUR.