DETROIT — The man from Down Under is on top in Detroit, again.

Cam Davis made it a double-up in the Motor City on Sunday, when he survived unusually difficult conditions at Detroit Golf Club to win his second Rocket Mortgage Classic championship.

Davis won in 2021 in a playoff, and it looked like it might take another playoff to get his second PGA Tour victory, until Akshay Bhatia, the leader all the week, three-putted from 28 feet for a closing bogey, just his second bogey of the week. Davis shot a final-round 70 that he felt could've been, and should've been, much better, if not for a string of lipped-out putts. But it was good for an 18-under total, the same score he won with the last time, this time one stroke better than Bhatia, Aaron Rai, Davis Thompson and Min Woo Lee.

"It was a rollercoaster of emotions at the end there," Davis said during his winner's press conference Sunday night, the victor's trophy sitting a foot away. "I felt like honestly so much, especially that back nine, just moment after moment of could have been awesome, but just didn't quite happen. I felt like it just wasn't going to be my day.

"When Akshay missed that putt, it's a combination of shock and feeling bad for him, but at the same time just realizing that the huge burden of trying to win again is off the shoulders.

"Still in a little bit of shock. It doesn't really feel real right now."

Once a course that typically bends for bunches of birdies, Detroit Golf Club showed a little teeth in the final round, with chilly conditions, stiff winds and some bumpy greens. Davis' final-round 70 was the best in the final two groups by two shots, as Bhatia and fellow 54-hole co-leader both shot 72, and Cameron Young, so frustrated off the tee that he broke his driver on the back nine, shot 1-over 73.

At least a half-dozen players were in contention on the back nine, but the two who had the best shot at tying or beating Davis were Bhatia and Lee, who both bogeyed the 18th hole.

Davis, 29, got up and down for birdie at the par-5 17th, and up and down again from the greenside rough at 18. Still, he wasn't certain he had done enough, especially after all those lip-outs, and the bogey at the par-5 14th.

"Didn't have a lot of pressure on me, because I didn't know I was tied for the lead," he said of his 18th-hole par. "I had a feeling I was up there and I really wanted to get up and down, but it wasn't like my hands were shaking."

They were shaking after the officially won the title, given the long road it's been to get back to the winner's circle, including a rough season in which he has acknowledged he hasn't been in the right head space. The emotional struggles even led him to recently start working with a hypnotherapist.

Bhatia, 22, led after the first, second and third rounds, and was looking for his third PGA Tour title, and second this season. Only Scottie Scheffler (six) and Rory McIlroy (two) have multiple wins this season. And he played nearly flawless golf all week, until a bogey at the par-4 third, his first bogey of the week.

No matter, the lefty bounced back with birdie at the par-5 fourth, making a 30-foot putt. He also made birdie at the easy seventh hole. But then he made 10 straight pars — albeit, the one at the par-4 13th was an incredible salvage job, after he hooked his tee shot into the trees, just 97 yards, leaving him nearly 300 for his second. But he also parred both par 5s on the back. He blasted from the greenside bunker to 8 feet at the 17th, but missed the putt.

He had 175 yards into the 18th and hit his approach 28 feet left of the pin. Right would've been better. He had to play it safe with the 28-footer, left it 4 feet, 3 inches short, and hooked it for the crushing, stunning bogey.

"I mean, it's hard. You've got so much slope there, so you don't want to run it 5, 6 feet by," said Bhatia, who opened the tournament with 56 holes without a bogey. "Just a little bit of nerves, honestly. I'm human."

This was the second straight week Bhatia was in the final group on Sunday. He lost to Scottie Scheffler, who beat Tom Kim in a playoff at the Travelers Championship, and tied for fifth there.

This was the second time Rai, 29, ever has played in the final group on Sunday. He showed no nerves from the get-go, making an opening birdie to take the outright lead early.

But he made three bogeys in a six-hole stretch from Nos. 6 to 11 (he had made one bogey total in his first 59 holes), also failed to make birdie at No. 17, which was ranked the easiest hole all week, and then drove his tee shot into the right rough on 18. That made a difficult approach, which he hit into the greenside bunker. He needed to hole it to match Davis, but settled for par, making a putt just longer than Bhatia's and on a similar line.

Rai shot 72, and fell short of his first PGA Tour win.

"I think it was tricky out there for both me and Akshay," said Rai, of England. "We didn't really have our best stuff. We both hung in there well. It wasn't quite enough for us today."

Finished tied for sixth at 15 under, three strokes back, were Rico Huey, who shot the round of the day with a 5-under 67, Eric Cole (69), Erik van Rooyen (72) and Young, who finished runner-up at the Rocket in 2022 and was seeking his first PGA Tour win. Young struggled off the tee much of the day, hitting three of his first 10 fairways. Sick of that, he leaned hard on his driver on the 14th tee and it broke; he used 3 wood into the house, and made no more birdies.

Tied for 10th at 14 under, four back, were amateur Luke Clanton (72), Taylor Moore (69), J.J. Spaun (69), Dylan Wu (69), Hayden Springer (70), Sam Stevens (73) and Nick Dunlap (71), who won on the PGA Tour earlier this season as an amateur, a feat Clanton was looking to match Sunday. Clanton, 20, a Florida State junior-to-be, gave it a run, getting to 16 under at one point, before fading.

In fact, there was more fading or players stuck in neutral than we're used to seeing at DGC, which played barely under par Sunday, to a 71.92 scoring average, the highest of the 24 rounds in Rocket history.

Defending champion Rickie Fowler tied for 31st at 9 under, after a 2-over 74.

Davis didn't know the plight others were having, so it didn't make him feel any better after he bogeyed his first hole, or after he burned the cup on putts, short and long, on four holes in a five-hole stretch on the back nine. Or when he found the pond on his approach at the par-5 14th, leading to a bogey.

He thought he had messed it up. Rather, he had doubled it up.

"I was very frustrated," said Davis, who also takes home the winner's check of $1.656 million. "It felt like there was a point where there's nothing I could do. Honestly, the putts were very frustrating to see miss. It was almost more frustrating to see both of the 3 woods I hit on 14 and 17 come up short. I couldn't have hit either of them any better. For that ball to roll back in the water on 14, when I finished 18, I was already thinking back to that hole going, 'Geez, I reckon if that ball stays up, it's a very different turn out to the event.

"The fact that all of that didn't go my way, I felt like I left six or seven shots out there just purely based on I felt like bad breaks.

"I felt it was almost a spectacular round. But it ended up just being enough."

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