ACE Group Classic Notebook: Round 3

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• With his victory, Fred Couples wins an official event for the first time since he prevailed at the 2003 Shell Houston Open.

• Couples wins a first-place check for $240,000 and collects a total of 240 points in the season-long Charles Schwab Cup race.

• With his 240 points, Couples takes over the lead in the Charles Schwab Cup race with 436 points. Tom Watson is second with 315 points followed by Mike Goodes with 161 points.

• Couples' victory came in his 104th start since his last victory in Houston. He made 102 starts on the PGA TOUR and two on the Champions Tour.

• It was quite a Champions Tour debut for Tommy Armour III. The two-time PGA TOUR winner shot an 11-under-par 61, breaking The ACE Group Classic tournament record of 62 by Gary Koch in 2004 (first round). It was also a course mark, snapping the record 63 by Doug Reed, The Quarry General Manager.

• Armour III is the first player on the Champions Tour to shoot a final-round 61 and not win since Tom Jenkins did so at the 2006 Boeing Greater Seattle Classic. Jenkins finished one stroke out of a two-man playoff (Keith Fergus and Tom Kite) at the event which was won by Kite.

• Armour III's 11-under-par 61 was not a career best. His all-time low was a 60 in the second round of the 1999 Las Vegas Invitational.

• Couples and Armour each recorded 18 birdies to lead all players in that category this week.

• Couples led all players in Greens in Regulation (49 of 54/90.7%).

• The last group continues to be a good place to play the final round. Fred Couples became the 10th consecutive player to play in the final group and go on to win the tournament. The last to not play in that group was Lanny Wadkins in 2000.

• Mike Goodes turned in his second consecutive top-10 finish when he finished T4. Goodes, the defending champion at this week's Allianz Championship, finished T6 at the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai.

• Scott Hoch showed no signs of a lengthy layoff following hand surgery last October. Hoch, who indicated he played very little golf since his surgery, shot a final-round 69 and finished third. He won this event in 2008.

• One of the Champions Tour's newest rookies, Paul Azinger, made a nice showing in his debut. Azinger fired a 2-under-par 70 and finished T21.

• With his T4 finish, Bernhard Langer posted his seventh consecutive top-10 finish dating back to last year.

• Peter Senior, the medalist at last fall's Champions Tour's National Qualifying Tournament finished T11 in his debut, shooting consecutive rounds of 71.

• Defending champion Loren Roberts finished T11.

• Sunday was the 28th anniversary of Wayne Levi's historic win at the Hawaiian Open. In winning, he became first PGA TOUR player to win a tournament while using a colored golf ball. After opening with an even-par 72, Levi followed with three straight sub-par rounds to nip Scott Simpson by one stroke at Waialae CC. A Wilson staff member, Levi used an Optic Orange ball in his victory.