Golf Roundup : Huston and Benz Win Pairs’ Title

John Huston and Amy Benz won the $800,000 J.C. Penney Golf Classic Sunday, beating the team of Larry Mize and Martha Nause by two strokes in a tense windup at Largo, Fla. that prompted Mize to complain about the tournament operation.

“Who ran the scoreboard here?” he asked after leaving the 18th green at the Bardmoor Country Club. “We thought all we had to do was sink a putt on the 18th to reach a tie and cause a playoff.”

Mize and Nause didn’t know that one-time high school teammates Huston and Benz, playing in front of them, had birdied the 18th to take a 2-stroke lead with a 4-day, 19-under par 269.

“It didn’t make any difference. I missed a 12-foot putt,” Mize said.

Emilee Klein, 14, of Sherman Oaks, became the youngest winner in the 22-year history of the California Women’s Amateur Golf Championship tournament at Carmel.

Klein, who took up golf at age 9, defeated Mary Budke on the 18th hole at the Carmel Valley Golf and Country Club. Budke, an emergency room doctor from South Pasadena, won the U.S. National Women’s Amateur Championship in 1972 at the age of 18.

A 5-foot par putt on the second sudden-death playoff hole gave Australia’s Rodger Davis a dramatic victory over American Fred Couples in the $1.25 million Bicentennial Classic golf tournament at Melbourne, Australia.

Davis, 37, defeated a star-studded field to collect the richest prize in Australian golf history--$430,000--and the biggest check of his career.

He had a 4-under-par final round of 68 to finish at 17-under-par 271. Couples pulled into a tie with a 67 on his final trip around the Royal Melbourne course.

Both players parred the first playoff hole, but Davis sank his par putt on the second sudden-death hole after Couples had a bogey.

Don Bies sank a 25-foot birdie putt on the final hole to win the Kaanapali Classic seniors golf tournament at Hawaii by one stroke over Don January.

Bies completed the 54-hole tournament, final stop on the Senior PGA Tour, at 12-under-par 204.

Fulton Allem, a South African who just completed his rookie year on the U.S. circuit, finished with a 10-under-par 278 to win $1 million, golf’s richest prize, in the Million Dollar Challenge at Sun City, South Africa. He had a final-round 69. American Don Pooley won the $200,000 second prize with a score of 279. Pooley shot a 66 Sunday.