The 6-foot par putt was still halfway to the cup when Jim Furyk raised his arm, turned and slammed his fist to punctuate his playoff victory and bury a few demons Sunday in the Wachovia Championship.
There was that four-hole playoff he lost at Quail Hollow last year. In his last tournament three weeks ago at Hilton Head, he watched 10-foot putts graze the lip on his last two holes to finish one shot behind. And in a trend he can only chalk up as a fluke, it had been 10 years since Furyk last won a playoff on the PGA Tour.
“It’s nice to come out and get it done this time,” he said.
Furyk had to work hard for his 11th career victory, making an 8-foot par putt on the 18th hole in regulation to close with a 1-under-par 71 and force a playoff with Trevor Immelman, then making the 6-footer on the 18th in the playoff to write a happier ending on a cold, rainy afternoon at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C.
But while Furyk was gritty as ever, he needed some help.
Immelman only had to two-putt for par from 50 feet on the 18th green in regulation, but ran his first attempt 10 feet by the cup and missed his par putt to the left. On the 18th hole in the playoff, Immelman fanned his drive into the right rough, had to lay up well short of the green, and his third shot spun off the front.
The best he could finish was bogey.
“When you come that close, you’re disappointed to not finish the job,” said Immelman, who had a two-shot lead with five holes to play and shot 70. “It’s my best finish on the PGA Tour, and I’ve got to build on that.”
In the playoff, Furyk found the bunker right of the fairway, ripped a 3-iron at the flag only to see it roll off the front, then used his putter to run it 6 feet by the hole and set up the winning putt.
Furyk, who finished at 12-under 276, earned $1.134 million, and it might be enough to move him into the top five in the world ranking. He also climbed to No. 3 in the Ryder Cup standings.
Immelman built a two-shot lead with a 12-foot birdie putt on the par-3 13th hole and kept his cushion as Furyk closed in. The South African twice made clutch par saves on the 16th and 17th to keep the lead, and hit the middle of the fairway and the middle of the green on the final hole.
“For anybody to get within 5 feet would have been a good effort,” Immelman said of his 50-foot putt in regulation.
Adam Scott never got within four shots of the lead, but wound up third after closing with a 71.
Retief Goosen was tied for the lead with seven holes to play but couldn’t keep up. Then, the two-time U.S. Open champion hit three balls into the creek on the par-4 18th and made a 9 to close with 77 and drop into a tie for 10th.
Vijay Singh, without a victory in nine months, made triple bogey on the last hole for an 81, his highest score on the PGA Tour since he shot 84 in the second round of the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie.
Masters champion Phil Mickelson continued to look sluggish in closing with a 74 to finish at 290.
LPGA: Cristie Kerr overcame a four-stroke deficit to win her seventh tour title, closing with a 5-under 67 for a two-stroke victory over Lorena Ochoa, Pat Hurst and Angela Stanford in the Franklin American Mortgage Championship in Franklin, Tenn.
Kerr had five birdies in her bogey-free round to finish with a tournament-record 19-under 269 total on the Vanderbilt Legends Club’s Ironhorse Course. Kerr broke the mark of 17-under set by Annika Sorenstam in 2002, and matched the lowest score on tour this year, Ochoa’s 19-under in the 54-hole Takefuji Classic.
Ochoa, the tour money leader who won here in 2004, had three straight birdies to pull within two of Kerr. Ochoa tried to eagle the par-5, 469-yard 18th, but hit a 5-iron from 180 yards into the water and finished with a 66.
Hurst did have a chance at eagle on No. 18, but her putt came up short and she settled for her fifth straight birdie and a 68.
Stanford, trying to win for the second time in her career and also attempting to become the third wire-to-wire winner on tour this year, finished with a 73.
Champions Tour: Brad Bryant won the Regions Charity Classic for his second tour victory of the year, closing with an eagle, birdie and a par for an 8-under 64 and a two-stroke victory over Mark McNulty in Hoover, Ala.
Bryant hovered within striking distance with a bogey-free tournament before finally overtaking McNulty on No. 17. Bryant finished with a 17-under 199 total and earned $240,000 for his second victory in his past four starts.
McNulty, who had a three- stroke lead through 15 holes, sent his second shot into the water on No. 17 for the second straight day and made a double bogey. That left an opening for Bryant, who used a near-perfect approach to hit his ball less than 4 feet from the hole to set up a birdie putt for a one-stroke edge.
McNulty could only watch with a grimace as he sent the ball bouncing off the green and back into the water on No. 18. McNulty bogeyed the hole for a 67, and Bryant finished with a par for the two-stroke margin.
European PGA: Francesco Molinari became the first Italian to win the Italian Open since Massimo Mannelli in 1980, shooting a 7-under 65 for a four-stroke victory in Milan, Italy.
The 23-year-old Molinari, the brother of U.S. Amateur champion Edoardo Molinari, had a 23-under 265 total on the Castello di Tolcinasco Golf Club course. Denmark’s Anders Hansen (66) and Sweden’s Jarmo Sandelin (65) tied for second.
