SAN MARTIN, Calif. — The familiar chants of “Rocco! Rocco!” never sounded better or louder as he approached the 18th hole Sunday.
Rocco Mediate holed out for an eagle for the fourth straight day, hitting a pitching wedge approach from 116 yards that spun back into the cup on the par-4 17th hole en route to a one-stroke victory over Bo Van Pelt and rookie Alex Prugh in the Open.
“Do you believe what just happened out there?” Mediate said. “I have a job again.”
Mediate, 47, won his sixth PGA Tour title and first since 2002, finishing with a 2-over- par 73 for a 15-under 269 total. He earned $900,000 and a two-year tour exemption.
Mediate had a hole-in-one on the par-3 third hole Thursday, holed out from 160 yards Friday on the par-4 fourth, and holed out from 111 yards Saturday on the par-5 15th.
Prugh shot a 69, and Van Pelt closed with a 71.
U.S. Ryder Cup player Rickie Fowler birdied three of his final five holes for a 69 to finish fourth at 13 under. Chris Tidland (69) was fifth at 12 under in the Fall Series event.
“I was walking down the stairs, and I heard the roar,” Fowler said. “I couldn’t see the green but I could tell who the roar was for. It was pretty loud.”
Mediate, who came into the tournament 182nd on the money list, now has some security.
“I had signed up for tour school,” he said. “That’s where I belonged until a half- hour ago.”
Mediate plans to play in Las Vegas and at the Disney “and then I’m going to rest.”
Footnotes.
Spain’s Beatriz Recari won the CVS/pharmacy LPGA Challenge in Danville, Calif., for her first LPGA Tour title, overcoming a late bogey for a one-stroke victory over France’s Gwladys Nocera.
• Richard Green shot a 7-under 65 to win the Portugal Masters in Vilamoura, beating a group of four players by two strokes.
• Padraig Harrington earned his first victory in two years, winning the Asian Tour’s Iskandar Johor Open in Malaysia.
