T.C. Means ‘The Champ’ of L.A. Open Playoff

T.C. Chen did his part in a bid for the Guinness Book of Records, but his brother T.M. let the family down.

Tze-Chung became the first golfer from Taiwan to win on the PGA tour when he defeated Ben Crenshaw in a playoff Sunday for the 61st Los Angeles Open.

Tze-Ming, the older of the Chen brothers, double-bogeyed the final hole to lose by a stroke in the Philippines Open to prevent what would have been the first time brothers won golf tournaments on the same day on different continents.

Both brothers were leading going into the final day. T.C.’s even-par 71 was good enough for a tie and another par was good enough to win. T.M.’s 75 left him one shot behind Brian Tennyson of Evansville, Ill.

“I don’t know what to tell you, I just feel wonderful,” T.C. said after watching Crenshaw--generally considered the finest putter on the tour--miss a four-foot par putt on the first playoff hole.

The two had tied with nine-under-par 275s after both birdied the final hole.

“It was a Riviera-type putt,” Crenshaw said. “It had a sharp left to right break. I just hit it too hard, right through the break.”

Moments earlier, on the 454-yard 18th hole, Crenshaw thought he had won the tournament when he sank a 18-foot putt for a birdie.

Crenshaw leaped in the air, hurled his cap to the crowd, and acted every bit like a winner.

Danny Edwards, who led by two strokes with four holes to play, missed his chance to tie when his birdie attempt from about the same distance slid to the right.

T.C. was next, 16 feet away, facing a downhill slider.

“When Ben made his putt, I thought he had won,” Chen said later. “All I thought was, ‘Don’t leave it short. Three putts is better than leaving it short.’ ”

He did neither, stroking the ball firmly into the heart of the cup.

“T.C. had just missed a very makeable five-footer on No. 17, so to make that putt on top of mine was very gritty, very gritty indeed,” Crenshaw said.

This sent Edwards--who had hoped to join his brother David as winner of the L.A. Open--to the clubhouse for a third-place check of $40,800, and Crenshaw and Chen to the 15th hole.

David Edwards, who missed the cut this week, won here in 1984.

The 15th hole is a par-4 dogleg to the right, 449 yards long. During the tournament it ranked as the fifth-most difficult hole on the course.

Chen hit first, pushing his tee shot into the right rough, just short of a gaping trap.

“T.C.’s tee shot to the right is the only place you don’t want to go on that hole,” Crenshaw said. “I wanted to stay to the left.”

His tee shot stayed left all right, far left, stopping in the middle of a gravel road.

“It was the first ball I’d pulled to the left in 36 holes,” Crenshaw said. He had an option of playing the ball where it lay, on pebble-covered hardpan, or dropping it a club length away in difficult-looking rough.

“I decided to hit it where it was. I had 192 yards to the pin and the ball was sitting up nicely, but I lost my footing a little.”

The ball landed in a greenside trap.

Chen, meanwhile, had hit a towering 4-iron shot over the same trap that stopped about 15 feet from the pin.

Crenshaw hit a marvelous explosion shot, the ball rolling to within four feet of the pin.

When Chen missed his birdie attempt, it appeared that Crenshaw’s scrambling magic had saved him again and that the match would go to the next hole.

There probably wasn’t a person in the gallery, or in the locker room where the players were watching, who expected to see Crenshaw miss. But the putt wasn’t really close as it hurried along left of the hole, too fast to catch the break that Crenshaw had seen.

It was the first bogey Crenshaw had made in two days of play over the treacherous ravines of Riviera.

It was also the sixth straight time Crenshaw had lost a playoff.

Chen, a native of Taipei who now lives in Walnut, collected $108,000, pushing his year’s earnings to $146,488, a career high.

It was his first win in five years on the U.S. tour and only the second win ever by an Asian. Isao Aoki won the 1983 Hawaiian Open.

Chen’s best previous finishes were seconds when he lost in a playoff to Fred Couples in the 1983 Kemper Open, and when he blew a five-stroke lead and lost to Andy North in the 1985 U.S. Open.

Chen, however, has won seven tournaments on the Asian tour, the last one in 1985.

For Crenshaw, a winner of the Masters and 11 others tournaments, it was a bitter disappointment. As one of the game’s most devoted historians, he had wanted to win at Riviera--where Ben Hogan had won the United States Open in 1948.

For whatever consolation it might be for the popular Texan, his score of 275 was one stroke better than Hogan’s.

Edwards appeared to have things in hand with a two-stroke lead as he reached the 15th tee.

“I put kind of a quick swing on my drive and the ball hit a tree,” Edwards explained. “I almost made the putt to save par, but not quite.”

The bad break of the tournament occurred two holes later when Edwards hit what appeared to be an excellent third shot on the par 5 hole, but the ball bounced crazily a foot off the green in the rough.

“The shot was only 130 yards and it hit 10 feet to the right of the flag,” Edwards said. “I had to chip from the bad lie. I wanted the ball to catch the fringe and roll up to the hole but I hit it four or five inches too far. The ball hit the green and there was no stopping it.”

When Edwards missed the putt, the match was tied.

“That’s the way golf is, you take what you get. I couldn’t hit that approach shot much better but the results were bad. If the ball kicks left, I might make the putt and be two shots to the good.

“When it happened the way it did, the momentum kind of switched.”

Curiously, the three players tied for the lead going to the 72nd hole--Chen, Crenshaw and Edwards--were in the same final pairing.

As they teed off on the final hole, the possibility of a seven-player playoff loomed if the three leaders all made bogey 5. As it turned out, the Wadkins brothers, Lanny (66) and Bobby (71), Don Pooley (69) and former UCLA star Steve Pate (67) tied for fourth at 277.

Donnie Hammond finished alone at 279 with Seve Ballesteros, who struggled to a par 71, at 280.

With little or no wind and the greens dampened slightly by an overnight shower, Riviera yielded an unusual number of low scores.

Twenty-one players had scores in the 60s with Bill Sander having the day’s low round of six-under-par 65. But for one nine-hole collapse on Saturday when he shot a seven-over-par 43 on the back nine, Sander would have been in the hunt for his first tournament win.