Levin tied for 4th at last year's Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

The award for the day’s most unintentionally amusing headline probably goes the way of the Sacramento Bee, whose interview with this week’s PGA Tour hard-luck story is titled “Levin hopes he learns from Phoenix collapse”.

You can’t beat that note of uncertainty.

Fortunately, the contents of Steve Pajak’s feature reveal a Spencer Levin considerably less ambivalent about his loss last week than the accompanying headline would suggest.

The 27-year-old seems determined to take what positive experiences he can from the final round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open, during which he contrived to lose a six-shot lead.

“I’m still trying to learn little things here and there… I haven’t been playing golf for that long. It showed me that I can get [to the lead on the PGA Tour] and I can win. I’m going to take the positives.”

Levin’s catastrophic loss of rhythm on Sunday (which saw him slump to a final round of 76) stemmed, he believes, from a failure to approach the final round with same diligence he applied to the preceding three.

“It’s almost like you’re kind of wanting the holes to run out real quick… Let’s make a par and hurry to the next hole. Let’s get the holes done with instead of just enjoying it.”

Whether the University of New Mexico alum proves capable of emulating FedEx Cup leader Kyle Stanley, who immediately bounced back from implosion at the Farmers Insurance Open to claim his maiden PGA Tour victory (at Levin’s expense, of course), is a question that remains to be answered.

Levin, however, has no intention of publicly contemplating so neat a resolution to his recent difficulties. After all, as he himself was quick to stress, “It’s not like I can try harder”.

Conor Nagle