Furyk Rallies to Win in Hawaii

Playing for the first time in two months following a freak football injury to his right wrist, Jim Furyk would have been happy just to make it through 72 holes in the Mercedes Championships at Kapalua, Hawaii.

In the end, he was thankful that was all he had to play.

Four strokes down to start the final day, Furyk sank a 10-foot birdie putt on the final hole Sunday and won the Mercedes title when Rory Sabbatini missed a three-foot birdie putt that would have forced a playoff.

Furyk had his driver out and was preparing to go back to the 18th hole for a sudden-death playoff as Sabbatini lined up his putt. Instead, he won for the sixth time in his career, and the second time in Hawaii.

“I’d like to win this event with a more heroic finish,” Furyk said. “I feel for Rory. It’s a pretty sick feeling.”

Furyk closed with a six-under-par 67 for a 274 total and was the only player to have four rounds in the 60s on the mountainous, windy Plantation Course at Kapalua. He earned $630,000 and a Mercedes sports car.

Sabbatini also came to Maui with low expectations.

“I would have taken 33rd place” in the field of 33 winners from last year, he said.

Instead, he overcame a couple of bogeys with bold play, and refused to beat himself up over the short putt that was no tap-in--the slope of the green was to the right, but the grain of the grass and the wind were to the left.

“There’s nothing in golf that’s ever a gimme,” he said. “I didn’t trust my line. I knew I missed when I hit it. But I came here to give it my best, and I’m not sorry about that.”

It was another thrilling finish at Kapalua, where last year Tiger Woods and Ernie Els matched eagles on the 633-yard closing hole that drops down toward the Pacific Ocean.

The only thing missing this year was Woods.

Coming off perhaps the greatest season in golf, Woods never got untracked and closed with a 69, leaving him six strokes behind in a tie for eighth.

“Not bad for coming out and really not playing a whole lot,” Woods said. “A little bit of rust, and it showed. If I could have made a few more putts the first three days, I would have been right there.”

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Mark Wiebe seems to be getting better with age. So does his bank account.

Wiebe, his nerves intact after pulling a child out of the way of a golf cart, shot a six-under-par 66 in the weather-delayed Tucson Open to put himself in position for his first victory in nearly 15 years.

He won once in 1985, his second year on the PGA Tour, and again in 1986. But last season was Wiebe’s most lucrative as he made 19 of 28 cuts and earned $511,414.

Now he stands to make $540,000 in one tournament if he can put together another round today like his last, in which he carded seven birdies and only one bogey.

“The only record I look at every year is the money list,” Wiebe said about the time since his last title. “It’s not how; just get the job done. I told them outside that I would love to play well tomorrow because I could say I played well every day.”

Wiebe had four birdies by the turn at No. 10. Then came an incident in which a young boy asked for his autograph while Wiebe was sitting in the back of a cart.

Somehow, the driver allowed the vehicle to roll backward and Wiebe, the father of three, grabbed the boy by the arm and lifted him onto his lap.

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Fighting off nasty cold symptoms, Se Ri Pak birdied seven of the last 11 holes and shot an eight-under-par 64 to pull away from Penny Hammel and Carin Koch and win the season-opening YourLife Vitamins LPGA Classic at Orlando, Fla.

It put an immediate stop to any talk of the junior jinx that left Pak winless in 2000 after consecutive four-victory seasons, including a rookie year in which she won the LPGA Championship and U.S. Open.

Up Next

This week’s schedule for golf’s major tours:

PGA

* Thursday-Sunday--Sony Open, Honolulu.

LPGA

* Thursday-Sunday--Subaru Memorial of Naples, Fla.

SENIOR

* Friday-Sunday--MasterCard Championship, Kaupulehu-Kona, Hawaii.