Defending a PGA TOUR title for just the second time in his career Marc Leishman made a brave Sunday charge that will have boosted his confidence with the year’s first major just two weeks away.

A final round of 5-under 67, his best of the week at the Bay Hill course, jumped Leishman 28 places up the Arnold Palmer Invitational leaderboard to T7.

The performance comes on the back of some disappointing results in recent weeks and will have Leishman feeling more positive heading to Augusta National where he has previously shown he has the game to contend.

He was easily the best of the Australasians in the field with Jason Day finishing three shots further back and T22 and Adam Scott 2-under and T41.

Curtis Luck was the last of the Australasian contingent to qualify for the weekend and struggled to a Sunday 76 to fall to 1-over and T58.

Leishman will be particularly pleased with his Sunday effort after a Saturday 73 that saw him drop outside the top-30, spoiling a solid 70-70 start.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, however, a bogey at the par-5 6^th in the final round offsetting a birdie at the third.

While he recovered with four consecutive birdies from the eighth, a second par-5 bogey of the day at 12, where he found the greenside bunker with his second but failed to get out of the sand, killed his momentum again.

Two more birdies on the way to the clubhouse were an impressive way to finish but he will rue the two dropped shots after finishing 8-under and 10 shots behind winner Rory McIlroy.

Jason Day will leave Bay Hill with mixed emotions after an even par final round to be 5-under overall and just outside the top-20.

A Saturday 67 was the highlight of the week for Day who was lacklustre in the opening two rounds playing alongside his boyhood hero Tiger Woods.

Scores of 73-71 had him outside the top-50 heading to the weekend so to finish where he did was encouraging but he knows he will need to improve if he is to contend at The Masters.

It was a somewhat similar story for Adam Scott whose scorecard of 73-70-72-71 featured more bogeys and doubles than he would have liked.

The 2013 Masters champion looks to be playing better than his scores suggest but he clearly has work to do ahead of the year’s first major.

Curtis Luck, playing on a sponsor’s invite, found himself just outside the top-10 after a second round 68 and adopted an aggressive attitude for the weekend citing his lack of status on the PGA TOUR and need to make the most of his opportunity.

Weekend scores of 74-76 were clearly far from his best golf and he will return to the Web.com Tour with some highlights in the memory banks.

Stuart Appleby, also playing on a sponsor’s invite, has played little tournament golf in 2018 and it showed with scores of 78-70 to miss the cut; Danny Lee and Cameron Smith suffering the same fate.

Smith will anxiously await the release of the latest world rankings having entered the week in 50^th place and needing to stay there until after next week to be guaranteed a tee time at Augusta National.