Golf Roundup : Frost Adds to Crenshaw’s Icy Playoff Record

It wasn’t just the victory, it was the competition David Frost enjoyed.

Frost scrambled for a par, making a three-foot putt on the second playoff hole Sunday to beat Ben Crenshaw and win the World Series of Golf at Akron, Ohio.

“The most thrilling thing is to beat Crenshaw, (Payne) Stewart and (Greg) Norman,” Frost said of the shootout down the stretch.

Stewart and Norman barely missed joining Frost and Crenshaw in the playoff.

Crenshaw made the playoff by one-putting the last four holes in regulation. But the results were the same for the Texan once he got there.

“I’m beginning to have a real, particular aversion to playoffs,” Crenshaw said after his bogey on the second extra hole ran his career playoff record to 0-7.

“I’m proud of what I did. I worked four times harder than anybody else out there. I can’t remember working so hard.”

Crenshaw hit it all over the Firestone Country Club course for four days. He made double bogeys. He made sevens on birdie holes. He wandered around trees and into traps. He put himself in almost constant jeopardy. But, somehow, he stayed in or around the lead.

Crenshaw and Frost, a native of South Africa who lives in Dallas, completed regulation at 276, four under par.

Crenshaw, who had to overcome still another double bogey, had a closing 68 and the steady Frost had a 69.

The victory, Frost’s third in the last two years on the American tour, was worth $180,000 from the total purse of $1 million and pushed his earnings for the year to $507,159.

More important, it provided him with a 10-year exemption to PGA Tour events, enough to last him until age 39.

Crenshaw won $108,000 and became only the fifth man to go over $4 million in career earnings. Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Kite and Curtis Strange are the others.

Stewart, newly crowned PGA champion, was tied for the lead and had a chance to join the playoff until he bogeyed the last two holes for a 71.

Norman, attempting to win a second title in as many weeks, once got to within a stroke of the lead, but finished at 278 after a 71.

Betsy King survived a lapse in the middle of the final round and shot a four-under-par 68 to win the LPGA World Championship by three strokes at Buford, Ga., for her sixth victory of the season.

King, whose $83,500 first prize lifted her earnings to $609,457 this year, appeared on her way to running away to victory when she had an eagle and three birdies on the first seven holes.

But she then bogeyed Nos. 9, 11 and 12 to fall into a tie with England’s Laura Davies with six holes left.

King regained the lead with a birdie on No. 13, a hole Davis bogeyed. King knocked in a 10-foot birdie putt on the 15th and coasted to her 20th career victory.

She had a 13-under-par 275 total for 72 holes on the hilly, 6,107-yard PineIsle Resort course.

Three strokes back were Pat Bradley and Patty Sheehan, both closing with 70-278 totals.

Davies, the 1987 U.S. Open winner, birdied No. 14 to get within a shot, but missed a short putt for a double bogey-5 on No. 17 and fell into a tie for fourth place with Beth Daniel at 69-279.

Slump-ridden Sandy Lyle of Scotland was omitted from the European Ryder Cup team at his own request, he said at the World Series of Golf at Akron, Ohio.

The decision, he said, was “based entirely on my performance over the last few months.”

“It was not up to standard. Better to give someone else a chance,” Lyle said.

In the World Series of Golf this weekend, the 1988 Masters champion had rounds of 74, 74, 77, 72 and finished 17-over par at 297.

The biennial Ryder Cup matches, between leading professionals from the United States and Europe, will be played at the Belfry, Sutton-Coldfield, in the English midlands, Sept. 22-24.