Willis Is Perfect as PGA Player

One day, Garrett Willis was unknown to his playing partners. The next, he was the Tucson Open champion with a two-year exemption and a guaranteed ticket to next year’s elite Mercedes Championships.

The 27-year-old rookie shot a three-under-par 69 Monday and won his first event as a card-carrying member of the PGA Tour by sinking a six-foot putt to save par on the final hole.

It beat Kevin Sutherland by one stroke.

“Here I am, a month out of Q (qualifying) School, and I went there not knowing where I was going to be playing this year, and now I’m a PGA winner,” Willis exulted. “What a country this is.”

Willis, who finished at 15-under 273, qualified for the 1998 and 1999 U.S. Opens and played in the 1995 Canadian Open as an amateur, failing to make the cut in any of them. He also missed the cut in his last nine Buy.com tournaments last year.

Then he shot a final-round 63 to earn a tour card at qualifying school after changing his mind about asking for the entry fee back.

He earned $540,000, vaulting to third on the money list behind Match Play champion Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk, who won the Mercedes--an event for winners from the previous year--a day earlier.

Willis became the third player to win in his first action as a PGA Tour member. The others were Ben Crenshaw at the 1973 San Antonio-Texas Open, and Robert Gamez at Tucson in 1990.

The tournament ran late because snow and rain Friday forced a one-day postponement of the second round. But scores were low again on the second day of warm sunshine.

Sutherland, one of six first-round co-leaders, had a 68.

“It’s a great way to start the year,” said Sutherland, a non-winner whose last second-place finish was in the 1997 Houston Open.

Bob Tway, Cliff Kresge and K.J. Choi carded 66s--matching the best rounds of the event after Willis’ 64 on Sunday.

Tway and Geoff Ogilvy, another first-round leader, were at 275, with Kresge, Choi, Greg Kraft and Mark Wiebe at 276. Wiebe became the sixth consecutive third-round leader to fail to hold on in Tucson.

Willis got the last of his five birdies on the 12th hole and played the last five holes knowing Sutherland had birdied No. 16 to go 14 under.

The pressure appeared to get to the rookie on No. 17, when he missed a four-foot birdie opportunity because he hit it too hard, and again when his approach shot to the 465-yard final hole landed 55 feet short of the flag on the uphill green.

But Willis, who said after the third round that playing on the manicured courses of the big tour is a privilege in itself, arrived at the green with a smile on his face. He stroked the first putt firmly, sending it up just past the flag, and drilled the winner into the center of the cup.