GOLF ROUNDUP : Las Vegas Victory Puts Cook in Heady Company

John Cook, runner-up in the British Open and PGA, scored a front-running victory Sunday in the Las Vegas Invitational and joined Fred Couples and Davis Love III in two top-of-the-tour categories.

Cook’s two-stroke victory, secured with a bogey-free final round of 68, was his third of the season and tied Couples and Love for the most on the PGA Tour this year.

The victory, over five days, 90 holes and three courses, was worth $234,000 from the $1.3-million purse and enabled Cook to join Couples and Love as a $1-million winner this year. Couples leads with $1,268,188 and Love has $1,157,630.

Cook, with $1,119,971, is only the eighth player to reach that figure in season earnings, and suddenly finds himself in the race for the season’s money-winning title and Player of the Year honors.

“That’s too much for me,” Cook said. “I just want to keep going and see what happens for the rest of the year.”

Cook, who won the Hawaiian Open and the Bob Hope Classic earlier this season, won the sixth title of his 13-year pro career with a 334 total, 26 under par.

South African David Frost, who has won twice this year, put the pressure on Cook with a nine-under-par 63 over the final 18 holes at the new TPC at Summerlin and was second alone at 336.

Bob Charles shot his second consecutive 65 and scored a seven-stroke victory in the Senior Gold Rush tournament at Sacramento.

Charles finished with a 54-hole total of 201 at the Rancho Murieta Country Club, breaking the record of 204 set by George Archer in 1990.

Gary Player, with a 67, and Chi Chi Rodriguez, with a 69, tied for second at 208.

The victory by Charles, who has finished among the top seven money winners every year since he joined the Senior PGA Tour six years ago, was his first of the year.

Nick Faldo took a six-hole lead on the first 18 holes and went on to beat Jeff Sluman, 8 and 7, in the finals of the World Match Play golf championship at Virginia Water, England.

Faldo, the British Open champion, took a big lead at Wentworth despite a bogey-bogey-double bogey slump from the 13th to 15th holes and went on to score the widest victory ever in the World Match Play title match.

Sluman, who beat defending champion and five-time winner Seve Ballesteros in the quarterfinals and three-time titlist Ian Woosnam in the semifinals, never challenged Faldo.