Farmington, Pa. – Jason Gore stood up to an excellent late-season field, and to the very pressure that wilted him three months ago at the U.S. Open. Most of all, he stood up to Sunday.
Gore, whose last-day unraveling already is part of Open lore, held off the 84 Lumber Classic field with big drives and steely nerves to win on the PGA Tour barely a month after being stuck in golf’s minor leagues.
Gore’s four-stroke lead with five holes to play was down to one over runner-up Carlos Franco by No. 18, but Gore landed his approach shot on the 468-yard par-4 on the lower fringe of the green. With a playoff looming if he didn’t get up and down, Gore deftly lagged his putt from 90 feet to within 22 inches and tapped in for a final-round 2-under-par 70 and the PGA Tour victory he once thought might never come.
“I hit the best putt of my life,” he said. “What made it easier is the putt was so hard – I had to go up and down two elephants and over the windmill. It worked out, luckily.”
His 14-under 274 was three shots better than third-place finisher Ben Crane (67).
“It’s pretty incredible,” said Gore, who played with a sponsor’s exemption. “Around May-ish I was wondering if I could get formula for my child, if I was going to make a house payment, and now look. They just handed me a check for $792,000. It’s amazing where a little perseverance and grit and maybe a little ignorance can take you.”
Gore never finished higher than 18th during two previous stays on the PGA Tour, in 2001 and 2003, and had won only $40,399 on that tour this year. Now, he joins Paul Stankowski (1996) as the only winners on the developmental Nationwide and PGA tours in the same year.
The portly, big-swinging Gore is the first to do so after earning the automatic in-season promotion that goes to any three-time Nationwide winner.
Now, all those public-course duffers who think they could make the leap to golf’s big leagues have a new hero to go with John Daly. Gore, 31, looks as much like a spectator as he does a pro, and his caddie wears not a Nike or a Titleist cap, but one plugging Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Jason Gore, this one’s on you. And this wasn’t an ordinary post-majors win, either, with most of the big names long since gone. The field for the $4.4 million event was unusually strong with four of the top six money winners, including Phil Mickelson and 2004 champion Vijay Singh.
Gore opened a two-shot lead with a 5-under 67 on Saturday, then never trailed on a Sunday that was a polar opposite of the U.S. Open, when he had a 14-over 84 while playing in the final group.
