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Sports PUBLISHED:
It shouldn't be a surprise. Perry, who won at the Buick Open in 2001, has always come back for more and he usually plays well. The fans have grown to love him, and why wouldn't they? Warwick Hills is a course that suits him and his game. That's a bonus because Perry, at age 47, is in the midst of one of the best stretches of golf in his career. He's in a zone where he can attack any layout and emerge unscathed and usually on the leaderboard. He won the Memorial in May and has three other top six finishes. After making a 2-foot, 4-inch putt for par on the 18th and a 19-under score, he was on the driving range warming up in case of a playoff on Sunday. He knew Woody Austin and Bubba Watson still had a chance. Watson could not birdie 18th and Austin couldn't make his par putt so Perry became the 50th winner of the Buick Open. He won $900,000, the keys to a Buick Enclave and cemented his spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team. It was his second Tour victory this year. He and a couple guys you might have heard of - Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson - are the only multiple winners this year so far. Perry wrapped up the win on the back nine, but put himself in position with four birdies on the front nine. He said when he woke up Sunday morning, he wasn't thinking about winning. "I just thought about playing a good front nine. To be honest, that's all I wanted to do," Perry said. "If I could have shot a low score on the front nine, that was may goal when I shot 4-under. ... It's tight, it's tree-lined and you have to really maneuver the ball well around the front nine." A birdie on the 10th pushed him to the top of the leaderboard. He bogeyed No. 13 but it didn't upset him, because he hadn't played the hole well in the first three rounds. Then on the 14th, he more than made up for it when he holed out a shot from a greenside bunker 9 feet from the hole for an eagle. "I wasn't nervous about it or worried about it and it came off like a dream, took two hops and just slam-dunked right into the cup," Perry said. "You never expect to make them, but that really energized me for the last few holes." Watson and Austin were one shot back in a round that went back and forth and came down to the final putt. Watson, who has never won a PGA Tour event, just missed a 11-foot, 10-inch putt on the par-4 18th. Had he made the birdie putt, he would have forced a playoff with Perry. "We thought it was going to break. You hit it at that speed to let it die in there, it was hanging up and, halfway to the hole, we knew it wasn't going to (go in) unless it did some miracle kick in," Watson said. Austin, who also tied for second here last year, bogeyed the final two holes. On the 18th, a par would have gotten him into a playoff with Perry, who was already finished at 19-under. But Austin blew the 63-foot putt 11 feet past the hole and then sunk a two-footer for a bogey and a tie for second. "I watched a little bit. ... I never want to leave a downhill putt for my second shot and I hit that first putt obviously way too hard," Austin said. "But you know, like I said, if you watched me putt all week, I should have won the tournament by 10 shots the way I played." Those two bogeys were the only ones he carded on the back nine in all four rounds. Austin had found the bulk of his success on the back nine where he was 16-under for the tournament. He was 2-under on the front over all four rounds. Bob Tway, Ken Duke and Matt Jones finished two shots back at 17-under. Dudley Hart, who started the day two shots off the lead, bogeyed four of the last six holes and finished four shots off the lead. His woes started on the 13th hole, when his second shot flew beyond the grandstand. He got a drop, put buried that third shot in a greenside bunker and had to settle for bogey. Daniel Chopra, who held the 54-hole lead, struggled on Sunday shooting a 75 and finished 13-under, along with Bo Van Pelt, who held the 36-hole lead. |
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