Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf: Final-Round Notebook  PGA TOUR Staff SAVANNAH, Ga. -- In winning the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf Sunday, Jay Haas won his eighth Champions Tour title in his 43rd career start and became the first player to successfully defend a Legends Division title at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf.  Tom Kite lost a Champions Tour playoff for the first time in his career Sunday. (Chris Condon/PGA TOUR/WireImage)
• The victory also marked Haas' first successful title defense in his professional career. Prior to Sunday, the last time a player successfully defended a Champions Tour title was when Bob Gilder won back-to-back events at the 2005-2006 Constellation Energy Classic near Baltimore. • Jay Haas' victory was his second in his last four starts and made him the first multiple winner on the Champions Tour in 2007. In March at the Toshiba Classic, Haas won by two strokes with a tournament-record score of 19-under 194 at Newport Beach Country Club. He's now won multiple titles in each of the last three years on the Champions Tour. • Jay Haas earned 395 Charles Schwab Cup points as a result of his victory and now has 996 Schwab Cup points on the season. Haas now enjoys a 351-point lead on Hale Irwin, who moved into second place with his T7 finish at this week's Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf. • Loren Roberts now is third in the Schwab Cup standings with 559 points, followed by Tom Purtzer (526) and Tom Kite (489). Haas earned last year's Charles Schwab Cup, defeating Roberts by just 20 points in the closest race ever in the six-year history. At the end of the official season, the player earning the most Charles Schwab Cup points will receive a $1 million annuity. • Jay Haas' first-place check for $395,000 equaled his largest paycheck ever on the Champions Tour and allowed him to become the first player over the $1 million mark in 2007 ($1,084,618). In 43 starts on the Champions Tour, Haas has now made $5,045,418 or $117,335 per start. • Jay Haas is now 24 under par in his last 108 holes on the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa course. He's a cumulative 3 under on the front nine and 21 under on the back nine. • Jay Haas' final-round 70 marked the fifth time in the six years of stroke play in the Legends Division that the winner carded a score of 70 or higher on Sunday. The lone exception came last year, when Haas won with a final-round 67. • Second-round leaders now have gone on to win five of the nine official events played on the Champions Tour in 2007. Five of the last six official events on the circuit have been decided by one stroke or in a playoff. • Tom Kite's runner-up finish this year was his first top-10 effort in the Legends Division. Prior to Sunday, Kite's best effort at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf was a T13 in 2002. • Nick Price fired a final-round 7-under 65, the low round of the tournament and his best round thus far on the Champions Tour, and vaulted up 12 spots into a T7, his first top-10 finish on the circuit. If not for an opening-round 76, Price might have won the event this week. He was T41 after play on Friday and then moved up 22 places with a 68 on Saturday. • Loren Roberts' 3-over-par 75 ended his all-time record streak of par/better scores at 37 consecutive. Roberts' run began at the 2006 Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach last fall. • Hale Irwin's final-round 3-under 69 moved him up into a T7 and his check for $85,500 put him over the $30 million mark in combined career earnings (PGA TOUR/Champions Tour) at $30,039,374. Last year at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf, Tom Kite eclipsed the $20 million mark. Since 2002, Irwin has finished among the top-10 67 times in 124 starts on the Champions Tour.
• Sunday's playoff between Tom Kite and Jay Haas was the first at stroke play in Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf history and just the fourth overall overtime session in the 30-year history of the event. Before Sunday, the last playoff came in 1998 at the Golf Club of Amelia Island in Florida, when Dale Douglass and Charles Coody went extra holes to defeat Hugh Baiocchi and David Graham. Haas is now 2-0 in playoffs on the Champions Tour while Tom Kite is 3-1. • For the second consecutive year, the par-4 sixth hole played as the most difficult for the week. The hole had a stroke average of 4.287 this year compared to 4.293 last year. The par -4 18th hole was the second hardest in 2007 with a stroke average of 4.273 and yielded just nine birdies for the week. • The Westin Savannah Harbor Resort & Spa course played only slightly harder this year than last year. The course had a stroke average of 72.093 this year vs. 72.034. The final-round scoring average this year was 71.760 vs. 71.816 on Sunday last year. • Keith Fergus had just 82 putts this week, tied with Raymond Floyd and Des Smyth for the fewest putts per round this week. He extended his streak of holes without a three-putt to 217 straight, the year's longest active streak. Copyright 2007 PGATOUR.com. All rights reserved. |
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