Price Is Right, Shooting a 70 for PGA Title : Golf: He makes two clutch putts on last three holes for three-shot victory.

A year ago, Nick Price withdrew at the final hour from the PGA Championship because his wife was about to have the couple’s first child. He handed his caddie to an obscure young player with a huge swing and a deft touch around the greens, then sat at home and watched on television as John Daly, the ninth and last alternate in the field, made history with his stunning victory at Crooked Stick in Indiana.

Sunday, it was Price’s turn in the harsh glare that only a major championship can bring, and with two huge putts--a 25-footer for birdie at the 16th hole, a 12-footer to save par and a two-shot lead at the 17th--he held together and claimed the 74th PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club when his closest pursuers fell apart.

“I feel like I got a monkey off my back, a big one, a whole troop of them,” said Price, winner of his first major tournament after finishing second in the British Open in 1982 and 1988.

Still, he said, he drew upon his experiences there to steel himself for Sunday’s final round, when he shot a one-under-par 70 that left him at six-under 278, three strokes ahead of his playing partner, John Cook, and Nick Faldo, Gene Sauers and Jim Gallagher Jr.

After being the only player in the field to shoot four sub-par rounds (70, 70, 68, 70), the victory was worth $280,000 to Price, 35, born of British parents in South Africa, raised in Zimbabwe and now a full-time resident of Orlando, Fla. More important, he said, is that “it’s something I’ve worked very hard for. The people who know me know how much this means to me, and my friends and my family gave me all the strength to pull it off.”

He had some help from the rest of the field.

Sauers, who led for the first three rounds and took a two-stroke advantage into the final 18, was a wreck on Bellerive’s long fairways and parking-lot hard greens and came in with a 75. He was in bunkers on the first two holes, plunked a five-iron into the water for double bogey at the short sixth and took himself out of contention with bogeys at Nos. 9, 10 and 11.

Faldo blew his chance at the championship when he shot 76 Saturday, but he came back with a 67, the lowest score Sunday, to get a share of second place.

“My game just went off a little bit (Saturday),” he said. “Of eight putts inside 13 feet, I only made one. Today, I was just trying to get the most out of the finish. . . . 64 might have done the trick.”

Gallagher, the son of an Indiana teaching pro and the third-place finisher in last year’s PGA, made a run on the back nine with birdies at 12 and 13 to get within two strokes of Price, but had a bogey No. 14 and again at 18.

Jeff Maggert, who held a two-stroke lead on Price at the 10th hole, also slipped away, playing behind Price in the final twosome with Sauers. Maggert made bogeys at 14 and 15 and a double bogey at the par-five 17th when he put his three-wood shot into the pond guarding the green when he gambled to get back into the picture.

“I gave it my best shot,” he said of a round of 74 that left him in sixth place. “It was a make-or-break shot, and I had to go for it.”

The man with the best chance of all down the stretch was Cook (shooting 71 on Sunday), who finished second to Faldo in the British Open at Muirfield three weeks ago. That day, Cook said, he gave the title away. Sunday, he said, Price earned it.

With Price at five under par and Cook two shots behind, Cook turned up the heat on his friend and playing partner on the 222-yard, par-three 16th. His two-iron went at the flag, then kicked right into the rough, leaving him 25 feet from the hole. “If there was a chip I could make, this was the one,” he said.

And so he did, evoking a huge roar from the gallery, and the response of a champion from Price. He had bogeyed the previous hole, missing a six-footer. “That just got me angry. I’d been playing so well up to there, and nine times out of 10 I make that putt.”

From the 16th tee, Price struck a three-iron that landed 25 feet from the hole. He had watched Cook chip in and saw the break over the last six feet. “That gave me an indication and I used it,” he said.

There was never any doubt about the snaking right-to-left putt, and Price maintained his two-stroke lead.

At the 17th, Price put his 270-yard drive in the middle of the fairway, about 15 yards in front of Cook, who had an agonizing choice. He said he thought about going for the green but was out of his comfort zone on the shot and decided to lay up in front of the water that would drown Maggert’s chances.

“I was 245 (yards) to the front,” Cook said. “If I was 235 to 238, I probably could have gotten it close. Believe me, I was trying every way to get a three-wood on the ball. A four there would’ve been great. But I had a sidehill lie, and I just couldn’t do it.”

Price went for the green with a three-wood, but watched his ball plunk into a bunker. His shot from there left him 40 feet for birdie. Cook hit a nine-iron that took a big bounce and hopped to the back fringe, from which he two-putted for par.

Price misjudged the speed of his birdie putt and ran it 12 feet past the hole, “and I couldn’t believe it went that far by.” Yet, when he hit an absolutely straight putt for par, “it went dead in the jar. That gave me the room. I knew 18 wasn’t really a birdie hole and if I make a par, I would win.”

He did. Price hit a drive down the middle, put a six-iron short of the green and hit a sand wedge to three feet.

He made the par putt, hugged his caddie, Jeff (Squeeky) Medlen--Daly’s man a year ago--then shook Cook’s hand and embraced wife Sue, standing near the silver trophy just off the green.

Later, Price talked about his experience at the British Open in 1982, when he blew a three-shot lead with six holes to go and lost by a stroke to Tom Watson.

“I was 25. I was inexperienced and I made double bogey at 15 and lost the championship by a shot,” he said. “It was a good thing for me. I don’t think I would have appreciated it as much as this one. It’s been a long wait, 10 years, but it’s been worth it. Who knows what would have happened to me if I’d won a major championship at 25? I don’t think I’d be the person I am today.”

PGA Championship

Player: Sunday/Total

Nick Price: 70--278

Jim Gallagher: 71--281

John Cook: 71--281

Gene Sauers: 75--281

Nick Faldo: 67--281

Jeff Maggert: 74--282

Dan Forsman: 70--283

Russ Cochran: 69--283