While most of the talk this year has focused on the PGA Tour’s young guns, Retief Goosen and 50-year-old Tom Lehman proved this week that the veterans still have game.
Two-time US Open champion Goosen fired a one-under par 70 to win the PGA Transitions Championship and post his first win on the USPGA Tour in four years.
South Africa’s Goosen sank a five-foot putt on the 18th hole to beat Americans Charles Howell and Brett Quigley by one stroke. It was his first win since the August 2005 International.
PHOTO: AP
His par putt curled in the side of the cup to break his victory drought.
“Eventually, you wonder if you can still do it,” Goosen said.
Goosen had a two-shot lead with three holes to play but struggled to hang on. He had two putts from 25 feet for the win on 18 but blew his first effort a good five feet past the hole.
Lehman was trying to become the seventh player in his 50s to win on the PGA Tour. But he did not make a birdie on Sunday until the 17th hole and finished four shots behind.
A former Ryder Cup captain, Lehman’s 75 left him in a tie for eighth.
Lehman, who turned 50 two weeks ago, had a one-shot lead going into the final round as he tried to become the first ex-Ryder Cup captain since Tom Watson in 1998 to win on the PGA Tour.
Howell tied Goosen for the lead with a 12-foot birdie on the 14th. But his next tee shot found the deep rough right of the 15th green and a flubbed chip led to a bogey.
Howell then bogeyed 16 after missing the green to the right again.
“You ride on such a thin line on a track like this, where you just know every bogey hurts more than most, because you know it’s so much harder to make up,” Howell said.
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