   
| THE PLAYERS Championship: Final-Round Notebook  PGA TOUR Staff PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Phil Mickelson used a final-round 69 Sunday to win his first career title at THE PLAYERS Championship on Sunday. This is the 31st career PGA TOUR title for Mickelson, who was victorious by two shots over Sergio Garcia.  Phil Mickelson didn't dominate the stats, but he took home the trophy. (Chris Condon/PGA TOUR/WireImage)
• Proving that statistics sometimes lie, Mickelson finished T65 in Driving Accuracy (53.6 percent), T24 in Greens in Regulation (63.9 percent), and 23rd in Putting Average (1.717). • Mickelson becomes the first left-hander in the history of THE PLAYERS Championship to claim the title. Mickelson held the previous best finishes by a lefty with a T3 in 2004. • This win is Mickelson's second career title in the state of Florida. His previous win in the Sunshine State came at the 1997 Bay Hill Invitational. • FedExCup points leader Tiger Woods remains atop the season-long list with 16,716 points. Mickelson picked up 4,950 points this week and moves into second on the list, 2,157 points ahead of Vijay Singh, who sits in third. • Sergio Garcia's weekend rounds of 67-66 (133) was one off THE PLAYERS Championship record for the final 36 holes. Fred Couples and Rocco Mediate share the record of 12-under-par 132, which they each set in 1996. • Garcia's runner-up finish is the best finish by a Spaniard in the history of THE PLAYERS Championship. Seve Ballesteros held the previous best finish with a T3 in both 1984 and 1980. • Jose Maria Olazabal joins Jim Colbert (1981) as the only players in THE PLAYERS Championship history to open the tournament with 78 and still manage to finish in the top-5 on the week. The highest opening round by a PLAYERS champion came in 1983, when Hal Sutton won the first of his two PLAYERS titles with a 73 to start the week. • Olazabal recorded four straight birdies on holes 9-12 for the second consecutive day on Sunday. His Saturday streak of five straight (Nos. 9-13) tied the best birdie streak on the PGA TOUR in 2007 with 12 other players. He also had a quartet of birdies on Friday on the first through fourth holes, his 10th through 13th of the day. • Since 1970, 76 is the highest opening round score for the winner of a TOUR event: 1989 Steve Jones (Bob Hope) and Mike Sullivan (Independent Insurance Agent Open), 1979 Fuzzy Zoeller (San Diego Open), 1978 Bruce Lietzke (Canadian Open) and 1970 Pete Brown (San Diego Open). • Stewart Cink used a bogey-free round of 66 in recording his career best T3 finish at THE PLAYERS Championship. Cink's previous best finish was T22 in 2004. Cink joined Karlsson as the only two players to record bogey-free rounds on Sunday. • Tiger Woods' final-round 67 is his lowest round at THE PLAYERS Championship since a closing 67 allowed him to claim his first and only PLAYERS title in 2001. His four-round total of even-par 288 marks the third straight year at THE PLAYERS where Woods has failed to finish the event under par for the week. He finished at 1-over par 289 in 2006 and 5-over par 293 in 2005. • Woods carded a double bogey on the par-4 fourth on Sunday and a double bogey on the par-4 seventh on Saturday. This is the first time that Woods has included a double bogey on his card in back-to-back rounds since the 2006 U.S. Open, where he fired rounds of 76-76--152 before missing the cut. • The PGA TOUR statistic for Greens in Regulation has long been an accurate measurement for players who play well at THE PLAYERS Championship. Nine of the past 24 winners have finished either first or tied for first for the week in Greens in Regulation, with the past three champions all achieving the feat (2006, Stephen Ames, T1; 2005, Fred Funk, 1st; 2004, Adam Scott, 1st). Mickelson finished the week T24 in that category by hitting 64.79 percent of his greens. • Robert Karlsson's final-round 66 is his lowest round on the PGA TOUR in 2007. Karlsson, who competes on both the PGA TOUR and the European Tour, recorded only his third career top-10 on TOUR with a T6 finish this week. His previous top-10 finishes came at the 1992 British Open (T5) and the 1999 Nissan Open (T9). • 2004 PLAYERS Champion Adam Scott recorded the low finish for a past champion this week. Scott's final-round 67 propelled him from T24 to T6 on the week. • Tim Clark and Carl Pettersson, former teammates at North Carolina State University, were paired together on Sunday, yet unable to use their familiarity to their advantage with rounds of 81 and 76, respectively. It was the fourth time in their PGA TOUR careers that the two had been paired together. • 2006 Nationwide Tour Player of the Year Ken Duke's eagle at the arduous par-4 14th on Sunday was only the third in tournament history on that hole and the first since Corey Pavin recorded one of his own in the first round in 1994. Duke used a 9-iron from 159 yards in recording his eagle. • J.B. Holmes' final-round 68 was a bit up and down yet ended on a great note. The 2006 FBR Open champion overcame an early bogey and double bogey to record eight birdies, including birdies on the final three holes. He joins O'Hair and Ryan Moore as the only players to birdie the 16th, 17th and 18th holes in a round this week. • Jose Coceres joins Ernie Els (Nissan Open -- 100) and Boo Weekley (Verizon Heritage -- 97) as the only players to have 100 putts or less in a single event on the PGA TOUR in 2007. Coceres finished THE PLAYERS Championship with 99 putts. • The daunting par-3 17th has never played as the most difficult hole for THE PLAYERS Championship in tournament history. The storied hole played as the second-most difficult this week with a scoring average of 3.386. The par-4 18th captured the title this week with an average of 4.409, making it the fourth-most difficult finishing hole on the PGA TOUR thus far in 2007. Phil Mickelson earns his 31st career PGA TOUR victory at the age of 36 years, 10 months and 27 days in his 326th PGA TOUR event as a professional and his 353rd overall TOUR event. • His win comes in his 14th start at THE PLAYERS Championship. He has made 10 cuts with three top-10s. He is one back (14 starts) of THE PLAYERS record (15 starts) for most starts before a first win, shared by Tom Kite (1989) and Fred Funk (2005). • Mickelson is the first left-hander to win THE PLAYERS. He also moves to No. 1 on the all-time PLAYERS Championship money list with $2,497,526, and becomes the 19th winner of THE PLAYERS who has double-digit career victories on the PGA TOUR. He now has $4,120,588 in season earnings, marking the seventh time he has exceeded the $4-million mark, and has surpassed the $43 million mark in career PGA TOUR Official Money with $43,634,626. • The victory gives Mickelson the longest current streak of consecutive seasons with multiple PGA TOUR victories with four. Tiger Woods has three seasons with multiple wins. Woods also has 12 consecutive seasons with at least one PGA TOUR victory, while Vijay Singh has six and Mickelson has five. • Mickelson also becomes the third multiple winner in 2007, joining Tiger Woods (Buick Invitational, World Golf Championships-CA Championship, Wachovia Championship) and Vijay Singh (Mercedes-Benz Championship, Arnold Palmer Invitational). • With 31 career PGA TOUR victories, Mickelson is now tied with Jimmy Demaret, Harry Cooper and Vijay Singh for 14th all-time. Singh won his 31st earlier this year at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Mickelson also now has won 16 different PGA TOUR events. • During his victory this week, Mickelson sank 66 of 70 putts from 10 feet and closer. In the SHOTLink era, three other players at the PLAYERS have made 94 percent or higher of their putts from 10 feet and closer (min. 65 attempts). Fred Funk, Shigeki Maruyama and Tim Petrovic in 2004 all made 94 percent of their putts from 10 feet and closer. • For Mickelson personally, it's the first time in the SHOTLink era that he has reached these numbers in putting from 10 feet or closer. • Both Phil Mickelson and Jose Maria Olazabal posted three rounds in the 60s this week. They are the first players to post three rounds under 70 since Jim Furyk in 2003. • Third-round leader Sean O'Hair scored a 7 on the par-3 17th hole Sunday. It's the first time a 54-hole leader has scored over-par on the 17th hole in the final round at Sawgrass. • Jose Maria Olazabal stood in 108th place on the leader board after the opening round, but rebounded to tie for fourth. Only one other player in the history of the PLAYERS stood as high or higher as Olazabal after the opening round and still recorded a top-5 finish. In 1996, Rocco Mediate stood 114th on the leader board after shooting an opening-round 74 and ended up finishing in a tie for fourth place. • Tiger Woods finished the 2007 PLAYERS Championship with a 67. After recording nine holes over par and only three holes under par through his first 45 holes of play, Woods carded only one hole over par and eight under par over his last 25 holes of action. • In only two other PGA TOUR events has Woods recorded at least nine holes over par and three or fewer holes under par through his first 45 holes of play. At the 1998 TOUR Championship, Woods recorded 10 holes over par and one under par in his first 45 holes and closed the event with five holes over par and seven under par. And at the 2003 PGA Championship, Woods had 12 over par and two under par through 45 holes and finished his final 25 with six over par and four under par. Copyright 2007 PGATOUR.com. All rights reserved. |
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