Hawkes survived a series of match play elimination rounds to be crowned winner of the event.

The 28-year-old shot even par during Saturday’s stroke round to qualify in 13^th position for Sunday’s match play battles, which culminated in victory over 23^rd seed Anthony Marchesani in the final.

The two golfers were tied through the opening five holes of the decider, before a wayward tee shot on the sixth and last hole eventually brought about Marchesani’s downfall.

On the 18^th hole at the Creswick course, Marchesani found the trees to the left of the fairway, which forced him to run his approach shot along the ground and short of the green.

Hawkes put his second shot to the back of the green and despite missing his birdie putt, eventually made par. Marchesani chipped his third shot close to the hole, but missed his par putt to hand victory to his opponent.

Hawkes said he had now won about 14 Pro-Am events in his career, many of which came last season.

He said the triumph in Creswick was an exciting one. 

“Any time winning these events (it’s exciting), especially some of the players I beat today. It was an extremely high-quality field for the Pro-Am circuit,” Hawkes said.

Hawkes said he had been playing his best golf in the past couple of years and believed his turnaround in form was due to the perspective he got by giving the game away to take up a job in a fitness store.

“I put the clubs down. I got that frustrated with it,” he said. “After two or three months of doing that (job), I thought golf isn’t that hard and then just came back out, got a bit of momentum and it just kept rolling from there.

“I see the trajectory going up. It seems to just keep getting better and that’s why I’m quite happy to keep investing the time and keep working at it.”

Joseph Matokovic won the amateur competition, beating Creswick Golf Club member Wayne Townsing.