After waiting all week for someone — anyone — to seize the Sony Open in Hawaii by the throat, Jimmy Walker grabbed it on the back nine Sunday and sprinted home.

Walker played the final 10 holes in 6 under par to fire a 7-under 63 in the final round of the PGA Tour’s 49th stop at Waialae Country Club.

It tied for low round of the week, set Thursday by Sang-Moon Bae. More importantly, and lucratively, it gave Walker a 17-under total of 263 and a one-shot victory over third-round leader Chris Kirk.

Kirk had the last shot at catching Walker, needing a 27-foot chip from the fringe for eagle on the final hole. He missed it, sank his 8-footer for birdie and solo second, then got on the next plane home to his 3-week-old son $604,800 richer.

Walker’s second win in six starts was worth $1,008,000. For a guy who needed 188 tries to get his first win — at the Frys.com Open three months ago in California — it was also … priceless.

"I think Frys taught me a lot," said Walker, who now has nine consecutive rounds in the 60s here. "It was just another step in the right direction. It was ‘stay patient, stay focused, don’t get bent out of shape when you make a bogey or any of that kind of stuff.’ I learned a lot. I learned a lot that week.

"I played really well on the weekend, and I think today … I’d been making a bunch of bogeys this week and I had plenty of firepower, and we were talking about it last night. I said, ‘I haven’t had that round where I kind of felt like I got everything out of it this week, where you make the par putt, you make the birdie putt you’re supposed to make, that kind of thing.’ I said, ‘If I didn’t make any bogeys today I’d have a pretty good shot’ because I felt like I had a lot of firepower this week."

Walker, who turns 35 on Thursday, began the day tied for fourth with 47-year-old Jerry Kelly — the 2002 Sony winner. They were just back of 20-somethings Kirk, rookie Will Wilcox and Harris English.

At the turn, English, trying to win for the third time in 16 starts, was 13 under and a shot ahead of five. A tournament played on a course just waiting to be torched, as it has been so many other years in benign conditions, was still searching for someone to spark a fire.

Masters champ Adam Scott, the second-ranked golfer in the world, sizzled early. He went out first on the back nine and cut his deficit to one at the turn — just as the leaders started — with five birdies.

He would bogey two of the next four and finish in a 12-way tie for eighth at 10-under 270 with, among many others, eighth-ranked Matt Kuchar, former Sony champs Zach Johnson (No. 7 in the rankings) and Ryan Palmer, and perennial contender Charles Howell III, who had his ninth T-15 finish at Waialae.

Palmer and Kuchar eagled the 18th to get their share of the loot, but almost everyone felt like they could have taken more from Waialae, which apparently toughened up after Russell Henley went 24 under last year.

"It’s so firm and fiery, it’s just hard to get it in the fairway," said Scott, who also finished slow Saturday. "To guarantee hitting a fairway, you have to sacrifice so much yardage, maybe 20 or 30 yards, and you’ve got to weigh up whether an 8-iron or a 5-iron is a good option going into the green. It makes you think, this course. It’s a tricky one to figure out."

It felt as if no one would ever truly figure out Waialae until the ninth hole Sunday. Birdies began to flow. English was the first to get to 13 under, 14 under and 15 under, at the 14th.

At that point, it was a four-man race, with Walker a shot back and Kelly and Kirk two. It was also a turning point for Walker, who hit it within 10 feet for birdie on Nos. 9, 10 and 13 but was facing 12 feet for par at the 14th.

He made that, then drained three consecutive birdie putts to pull ahead of English — who bogeyed the 15th — and go up by three.

Kirk, who two-putted every hole on the front nine, would birdie three of the final four, but it was too late.

"The first 13, 14 holes I could not get a putt started on line for some reason," said Kirk, who was fifth here last year. "I didn’t feel overly comfortable with my putter all week, and Friday I had kind of a similar day. That’s obviously frustrating. I feel like I hit the ball well enough to win this week, but it doesn’t always work out that way."

It does for one guy, and in the first full-field event of 2014, that was Walker.

"They say this is one of the harder courses on tour to hit fairways, and I don’t hit a lot to begin with, so I feel like everybody kind of comes back to me, I guess," said Walker, who led the field in driving average at 319.5 yards. "I felt like I drove it well. I drove it pretty well today. I felt like I was in the fairway quite a bit.

"This is where I got hurt in 2005 at this tournament, and it’s always been kind of like, you know, kind of a sore spot, but I always keep coming back because I like the golf course. I felt like I could play well here."

Kelly always has. He was putting for eagle on the ninth to take the lead. He didn’t make that but closed with a 65 to take third alone — his best finish in three years — at 15-under 265. It is his seventh top-10 at Sony, where he has earned a good percentage of his $25 million in career money, and a lot of friends.

Walker talked about trying to emulate Kelly’s contagious good nature. They have similarities. Kelly’s first win was here in his 200th tour start. Today, Walker has affirmation that his first win was not a fluke.

"I’ve always felt like I belonged and you need affirmation every now and then, and the win a couple months ago was like, ‘Yeah, OK, I can do it,’ " he said. "I did it, I was supposed to be able to do it, everybody told me I was supposed to do it, and I finally did it.

"And then everybody is, ‘Well, are you going to be the guy that won and we never hear from again or are you going to win again?’ I’ve always felt like I could, and it’s nice to get it done and do it again today.

"Today I was watching the leaderboard and it was actually really fun because we were making birdies all over the place, story topping each other and making putts. It was really fun. Jerry Kelly was having a blast. We were high-fiving and fist-bumping. It was cool. He’s like, let’s keep this going."

Now they both have.