NAPA, CA – Right when Brendan Steele thought he might have a chance to win at Silverado, all he could think about was how he lost.

A year ago, Steele had a 54-hole lead in the PGA Tour’s season opener when he made a sloppy bogey on the 12th hole, shot 40 on the back nine and threw it away. He was two shots behind on Sunday in the Safeway Open with little room for error when he three-putted No. 12 for bogey and figured he was done.

“I thought that was it for me,” Steele said. “I thought I would have to do something special. Last year, I tried not to make mistakes.”

This time, he made birdies.

Steele overcame a four-shot deficit in the final round, closed with three straight birdies on rain-soaked Silverado for a 7-under 65 and won by one shot over a faltering Patton Kizzire. It was Steele’s first victory in 141 starts on the PGA Tour dating to his rookie season when he won the Valero Texas Open.

“This is a little bit of redemption from last year,” Steele said. “It’s nice to close it off this way.”

It was a tough ending for Kizzire, who had a one-shot lead going into the final round and looked like a winner when he stuffed his tee shot into 2 feet for birdie on the 11th hole for a two-shot lead.

He struggled to hit fairways the rest of the way, and while he dropped only one shot on the 12th, he couldn’t keep Steele from gaining ground.

Steele hit 2-iron onto the green at the par-5 16th for a two-putt birdie. His 18-foot birdie putt on the 17th curled in the left side of the cup. And then he hit wedge into the par-5 18th and poured in a 7-foot birdie putt.

“You’ve got to really make something happen, especially when the conditions are soft,” Steele said. “I wanted to be aggressive and I didn’t want to just kind of coast in and just make sure that I had a decent week.”