For Ogilvy, It’s Time Well Spent

He had to play a record 129 holes to do it, but Geoff Ogilvy’s victory Sunday in the $7.5-million Accenture Match Play Championship was not only one for the record books, but also the geography books.

Ogilvy, an Australian with Scottish bloodlines who lives part time in Arizona, ended the PGA Tour’s 26-year stay at La Costa by outlasting Davis Love III, 3 and 2.

The match ended on the 16th green, the second trip around the layout that’s parked a short jog from the ocean, when Love missed a putt from the fringe that would have kept it going.

Once the ball stayed out, Ogilvy wound up banking $1.3 million, earning his second PGA Tour victory and polishing a refurbished image. If Ogilvy had been regarded as something of an underachiever and too self-critical in his six-year pro career, he may have shed two impressions at once.

“I always knew I had it in me,” he said. “I’m just a slow learner, I guess.”

Along the way to his victory, Ogilvy managed to defeat a slam of former major winners -- U.S. Open champion Michael Campbell in the first round, Masters champion Mike Weir in the third round, British Open champion Tom Lehman in the quarterfinals and PGA Championship winner Love in the finals.

Ranked 58th and seeded 52nd this week, Ogilvy is the second-lowest-seeded winner of this eight-year event -- Kevin Sutherland was seeded 62nd when he won in 2002.

Ogilvy didn’t play down to his seeding. He took the lead on the 16th hole in the morning round when he rolled in a seven-foot putt for a birdie and held it the rest of the way.

His biggest problem might have been trying not to think about having a big lead, which is something he didn’t have to worry about most of the week.

“I made sure I didn’t think about it,” he said. “So making sure you don’t think about it is actually thinking about it, isn’t it? But I tried my best.”

Ogilvy extended his 1-up lead after the first 18 holes to 3-up when he made birdies at the third and fourth holes in the afternoon. Love got close with a five-foot birdie putt at the sixth and was only one hole down when Ogilvy missed a four-footer to bogey the seventh.

But Ogilvy eagled the par-five 11th, knocking a four-iron from 225 yards to within six feet of the hole, then making the putt.

“That really turned it for me,” he said.

Ogilvy made an eight-foot putt to birdie the 12th for a 3-up lead that was more than enough, but it probably felt a little unusual to Ogilvy, who had spent most of the week hanging by his fingernails.

His first four matches went into extra holes, and 10 times his opponents stood over putts that would have beaten him. Ogilvy was four holes down to Weir with four to go in the third round, but he said his most harrowing close call was at the 20th hole in Thursday’s second round. Nick O’Hern had a five-footer to win, and Ogilvy was so sure he was heading home, he already had his cap in his hand to congratulate O’Hern.

“I thought I was done there,” he said.

Instead, three days later, Ogilvy wasn’t done until he held up the World Golf Championship trophy. But after he walked off the green and thought about what he had accomplished, Ogilvy could not say that destiny had been on his side.

“I never thought about it,” he said. “It appears that way now, I guess.”

Ogilvy’s coming-out party became a going-away party for La Costa. The PGA Tour finally said goodbye to the resort when Commissioner Tim Finchem announced that the 2007 match-play tournament would be staged at the 7,351-yard South Course at the Gallery Golf Club in Marana, Ariz., a suburb of Tucson. Finchem said the agreement lasts through 2010.

The first PGA Tour event at La Costa was in 1969, the Tournament of Champions, won by Gary Player.

“We’ll miss being at La Costa,” Finchem said.

He said the primary reasons for the shift were inconsistent weather as well as a local golf market that already includes the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, played only a month earlier.

Ogilvy, who had breakfast and lunch with Love, never got too far apart in the first 18 holes in the morning, notably because Love wobbled when he had a chance to open a 2-up lead.

“I needed to get him rattled and I never did,” said Love, who made $750,000 as runner-up.

“Not a good day, but a good week.”

Love missed a four-foot putt for par at the 14th, then double-bogeyed the 15th when he faced a nasty lie and left his ball in a greenside bunker. Love blasted out to four feet and two-putted for a six.

“The momentum was probably in his favor, but then he misses a short one and in match play, in an instant, it all switches back the other way,” Ogilvy said.

All square instead of two holes behind, Ogilvy moved into a 1-up lead at the par-three 16th when he knocked it to six feet and made the birdie.

As it turned out, he was only getting started, which is something Ogilvy could say about himself. Armed with new confidence, Ogilvy says he is ready to take on the challenges associated with greater expectations. He said he had already grown weary of answering questions about why he hasn’t won more often, but a new attitude that stresses staying positive has helped.

“The negativity is pretty impressive negativity sometimes,” he said. “It was probably pretty embarrassing what I said to myself. If you talked to anybody else like I talked to me, you wouldn’t be friends with them.”

Zach Johnson defeated Lehman, 1-up, in the consolation match. Johnson won $450,000, and Lehman made $335,000.