Jason Dufner won his fourth PGA Tour title with a two-hole play-off victory over Sweden's David Lingmerth at the CareerBuilder Challenge in California.

Dufner, who has not won a tournament on the tour since his 2013 PGA Championship major, was victorious thanks to a par on the second extra hole after Lingmerth had sent his second shot into the water.

Both men were tied on 25 under after the regulation 18 holes, but it took an outrageous escape shot from Dufner on the 17th to even force a play-off.

After hitting his tee shot into the rocks surrounding an island green, luckily evading water, he somehow managed to find a decent lie and produced a superb chip shot which hit the flag and almost went in, instead tapping in for an unlikely par.

He again produced nerves of steel on the first play-off hole, sinking a 10-foot par putt for half, before Lingmerth cracked first when he hooked his second shot from light rough on the 18th into the water.

That was enough to see Dufner seal the title and he will consider it deserved after being at the top of the leaderboard after all four rounds, though his 70 today was his most expensive round of the week.

He said: “It was pretty tough. This is the best tour in the world so for me to win I feel like I was one of the best players in the world this week.”

On his great escape on the 17th he added: “I thought the ball was in the water, I got a great break and sometimes those things happen and you need them to happen to win. I had a pretty clean lie, I leaned the shaft a little bit and kept the shaft open and hit one where you try and get a little bit of grip and I thought it was going to sneak in there for a bit.”

It was a valiant effort by the Swede, who followed up his third-round 62 with another round-of-the-day 65 to claw back a five-shot deficit on overnight leader Dufner.

Phil Mickelson, Kevin Na and Andrew Loupe were all tied in third on 21 under.