Kite Repaid With Interest : Golf: Love’s birdie putt on 18th hole gives team victory by one stroke in the Shark Shootout.

Several years ago, when Davis Love III was starting his pro career, his father, the late Davis Love Jr., asked Tom Kite if he would play some practice rounds with his son.

Kite obliged, knowing that older players helped him when he was getting started on the tour.

So Love repaid the kindness by teaming with Kite to win the Franklin Funds Shark Shootout Sunday at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

Love’s 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole provided a slim margin of victory in the scramble format of the last round. Love and Kite teamed to shoot a 13-under-par 59 for a three-round score of 191, 25 under.

Fred Couples and Raymond Floyd, Nick Price and Billy Ray Brown and Hale Irwin and Bruce Lietzke tied for second at 192.

Irwin, Lietzke, Ben Crenshaw and Chip Beck still had the 18th hole to play after Kite and Love finished, and they needed a birdie to force a playoff.

Lietzke and Irwin salvaged pars after their tee shots found the rough. Crenshaw and Beck made bogey.

They each missed downhill birdie putts of 20 feet, and then they couldn’t make a four-footer for par.

Kite and Crenshaw are old rivals, dating to their competition as teammates at the University of Texas in the early 1970s.

“I’ve seen him make so many putts,” said Kite, who was sitting near the green when Crenshaw stroked his first putt. “He gets that look, and I thought he had an excellent chance of making it.”

Crenshaw, who is regarded as one of the game’s best putters, watched his ball trickle past the hole.

So Kite, 42, and Love, 28, each earned $125,000. Greg Norman, the tournament host, added a $50,000 bonus to the winning team.

Kite, the U.S. Open champion, downplayed his own contribution, saying: “I pat myself on the back for having such a good partner. I think we would have been disappointed with anything less than a win.”

Love had an outstanding season on the PGA Tour. He won three tournaments early in the year and was the second-leading money winner behind Fred Couples with $1,191,630 in earnings.

And he has been on a recent winning streak. Love teamed with Couples to win the World Cup in Madrid and, a week ago Sunday, won the Kapalua International tournament in Hawaii.

“I feel like I’m picking my partners pretty good,” Love said.

Kite, who lives in Austin, Tex., has virtually taken up residence in California this month.

He played in the PGA Grand Slam of Golf earlier in the month, shooting a 62 on the final day of the four-man, 36-hole tournament only to lose in a playoff to Nick Price. Now, Kite will play in the Skins Game next Saturday and Sunday at the Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, along with Couples, Norman and Payne Stewart.

Irwin, 47, a three-time U.S. Open champion, and Lietzke, 41, weren’t overly disappointed with their second-place finish. They were on a team together for the first time.

“It’s always fun to have a chance,” Irwin said. “I’d like to play with Bruce again, because he’s the type of player I can play with and he’s always in play.”

Said Lietzke: “It’s my first experience with a partner who complemented my game. This is the first partner that I had who was really in control. My big disappointment today was my iron play.”

As the last group, they knew they had to get a birdie at the par-four, 446-yard finishing hole to force a playoff.

Their tee shots were in the rough, Lietzke on the left and Irwin on the right. They selected Lietzke’s long drive, which had gone into the gallery.

They had difficult second shots, 177 yards from the green, and they played Lietzke’s ball, which had landed in the rough, about 100 feet from the cup.

Irwin had the best chip--one he had to hole to tie Kite and Love--and it was a good effort, going six feet past the cup. They got their par to secure a tie for second.