Hot O’Meara Does a Slow Burn on Way to Three-Shot Victory

Here’s the book on winning golf tournaments: You can do it the hard way, you can do it the easy way, or as Mark O’Meara found out Sunday at La Costa, you also can do it the slow way.

Finishing his four-day stay in spa country, O’Meara massaged a four-under-par 68 out of La Costa and won the $1 million Mercedes Championships by three shots over Nick Faldo and Scott Hoch.

It was O’Meara’s 11th tournament victory and his third in 10 months, but it came slowly more than it came easily.

O’Meara and Faldo, who were paired together, received a warning for slow play on the 13th hole.

Now, if you really want to get a rise out of the mild-mannered O’Meara, you could either kidnap his bubble-shafted driver or accuse him of slow play.

O’Meara is one of the quicker players on the tour, and the talk about slow play made him mad fast.

“I said, ‘Fine, put me on the clock, it’s not me and it’s just he and I playing,’ ” O’Meara said. “It’s not me that’s playing slow, it’s not me that takes so long to pull the trigger.”

So what’s the problem?

“He has a hard time making a decision,” O’Meara said.

O’Meara said Faldo almost wore out the grass walking back and forth to survey his shots. O’Meara didn’t say anything to Faldo, though.

“I can’t really tell Nick Faldo, ‘Nick, Nick, Nick, speed up!’ ” O’Meara said. “There’s no question Nick walks fast between shots, but then . . . well, let’s put it this way--he’s very deliberate.”

As for O’Meara, he was very consistent. He birdied two of the first three holes, withstood semi-charges by Faldo and Hoch and finished with a flourish by knocking his seven-iron approach four feet from the hole.

From that distance, O’Meara rolled in his putt for birdie, collected the winner’s check for $180,000, then thought about what it all meant.

“Maybe this will be a big year for Mark O’Meara,” he said. “Who knows?”

Who, indeed? Hoch had no idea at all he was capable of even coming close to winning, so he wasn’t too upset about the outcome.

“I sent my wife back home to Orlando this morning to get the kids back in school,” Hoch said. “I told her, ‘No, way, I’m not going to win, don’t stick around.’ She would have killed me if I won.”

Hoch got closer to O’Meara than anyone on the back nine and was only one shot back when O’Meara bogeyed the 15th. But Hoch took himself out of it when the wind fooled him on No. 18, where he missed the green, chipped past the hole and two-putted for bogey.

Faldo, playing behind Hoch, waited a little longer to take himself out of it. His drive on 16 went underneath some trees. From there he missed the green and wound up with a bogey.

All of a sudden, O’Meara’s lead was three over Faldo and three over Hoch. It was over.

The end might have been in sight at No. 11 when Faldo missed a five-footer for birdie, but O’Meara rolled in his 25-footer for birdie.

“Everything I did, he answered,” Faldo said. “You can’t do anything more than that.”

Maybe, but you probably can do it faster, of course. But that’s another story. O’Meara is happy with the one from Sunday.

“You know, I didn’t want to shoot 73, 74 and lose,” O’Meara said. “It’s tough to have a lead like that.”