Haas hangs in there to win his second Legends of Golf crown  PGATOUR.com Editorial Coordinator SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Jay Haas didn't blow the field away this year at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf. Not like he did with last year's five-stroke victory and impressive 15-under-par score, the lowest score in tournament history since this event became a stroke-play event.  Like many of his peers, Jay Haas wore a ribbon honoring the Virginia Tech victims this week. (Chris Condon/PGA TOUR/WireImage)
No, this year Haas adopted a hang-in-there approach, and watched his competitors slowly fall away to give him his second consecutive title in Savannah. "I certainly didn't think I would be sitting here [as the winner]. I thought I would be in the car about a hundred miles down the road by now," said Haas, who lost his overnight lead early in the final round to a handful of players. "I didn't play that badly today, but just a lot of guys were doing some good things and I couldn't get a putt in the hole early on." But Brad Bryant seemed to have an idea Haas would hang around on Sunday for a win, saying after Saturday's round, "Jay is tough everyday. All last year, I kept thinking I'd beat him, then he'd birdie the last two holes or something. "When the rest of us are shooting 69, he's shooting 68. This is a perfect golf course for Jay, just ideal. The holes are the right distance for him, the par 5s set up nicely for him. Jay is probably best player we have [on the Champions Tour] at the moment and on this golf course he is definitely the best. All things being equal, Jay should win this tournament." Bryant, Nick Price, Hale Irwin, Gil Morgan, Wayne Levi, Tom Kite and Mark James all had their chances. Bryant finished one stroke back. Price ran out of holes. Irwin double bogeyed No. 12. Morgan had eight pars in the final eight holes. Levi made bogey on the 54th hole. Kite fell to Haas on the first hole of a playoff, missing a 5-footer for par. And James, well, his heartbreaking fall from the top was hard to watch, as he three-putted the final two holes. In the end, all that remained was an increasingly familiar sight: Haas at the top of the leaderboard. The win was his second of the young season, the other one coming at the Toshiba Classic in early March. Granted, Haas did have to pull a few unbelievable shots out of the bag on Sunday, with the most memorable one coming on the final hole of regulation. His shot from the right bunker on No. 18 landed less than a foot from the hole to set up a short, par-saving putt to send the tournament into overtime. "It's probably one of the greatest shots I ever hit," said the 53-year-old Haas. "Since I made the putt last year at the Senior PGA Championship at Oak Tree on the 72nd hole, which got me into a playoff, since then I've said that's the best shot I've ever hit. But this comes close to it, the bunker shot that I hit." Suffering from "bunker stats [that were] terrible this year," Haas had worked on his short game from the sand at his home course. Two fellow players also gave him some advice at the Allianz Championship earlier this year. "At Boca Raton, I got a lesson from Gary Player and Tom Kite, and two better bunker players there are not," said Haas. "I kind of worked on a lot of the things that both of them said to me." Think maybe Kite now wishes he could take back those valuable pearls of wisdom, since he just lost to Haas? "Yeah, kind of," laughed Haas. But what goes around, comes around. "I was talking to Hale Irwin a couple of days ago on the putting green about his putting on Friday afternoon and he nearly beat me, too. It's a vicious cycle." For an under-the-radar round, he's certainly produced some fireworks on the final holes. He's also now 24 under par on his last 108 holes at Westin Savannah Harbor Golf and Resort Spa course and a whopping 21 under par on the back nine. What's next for the eight-time Champions Tour winner? The Wake Forest University grad -- who, like many of the Champions Tour players this week, wore a maroon-and-orange ribbon on his hat in honor of Virginia Tech -- will not return to North Carolina for the Wachovia Championship this year. He's teed it up there in the past with sons Jay and Bill, a current member of the PGA TOUR. "I want to say it's in two weeks, and that's the week of Austin (the FedEx Kinko's Classic) and I'm defending my championship there. I'm going to miss it. I love playing there. I'm a member of Quail Hollow and love to see all the people there," said Haas, who lives in Greenville, S.C. His win at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf got his year off to a positive start in 2006, so it's no wonder he is anxious to stay out on the Champions Tour, defend his four titles from last year and extend his Charles Schwab Cup points lead.
"At the time I was coming here [last year], I was maybe just into the top 10 and this jumped me into second I think after this week," said Haas, who led the Schwab Cup race before the his win at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf and picked up 395 points to stretch his lead even more. He didn't gain points in the season-long race that rewards top-10 finishes at the Ginn Championship Hammock Beach Resort, so he wanted to make up the difference. "I needed this, needed a good finish and to win is great in that regard," he said. "The Charles Schwab Cup, that's important to me, and this helps my lead in that." He won nine times on the PGA TOUR, but was never the top player on that circuit during his tenure of more than 30 years there. "I've certainly been more consistent (on the Champions Tour) and my win percentage is light years ahead of where it was on the PGA TOUR," said Haas. "My game has aged well, I guess. I've been relatively healthy and it's allowed me to continue to play. "I think without question I'm a better putter than I ever was. And that's kind of frustrating thinking about, you know, that if I would have changed my putting style 25 years ago instead of five years ago. But it is what it is, and I'm not disappointed in my PGA TOUR career." He's just hoping to make his Champions Tour one even better. Copyright 2007 PGATOUR.com. All rights reserved. |
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