By Bill Cooney
Special to PGATOUR.com

MILWAUKEE -- The stage wasn’t the biggest or the brightest. There was no dramatic 4-wood approach or ensuing leap of faith.

This wasn’t the U.S. Open, but the U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee. And only a few thousand fans watched Corey Pavin take one deep breath, set down his putter and tap in an end to a 10-year drought.

The stage wasn’t the biggest or the brightest on Sunday, but to Pavin his 15th PGA TOUR victory seemed like a dream come true.

“I can’t quite put it up there with the (1995) U.S. Open,” Pavin said. “But it’s very close to my first win in Houston. …It’s very similar. Maybe better.”

Pavin’s two-putt par 5 on the 18th hole at Brown Deer Park Golf Course closed out an impressive week that began and ended with record performances.

He carded a final-round, 3-under-par 67 to clip crowd favorite and Madison (Wis.) resident Jerry Kelly (67) by two strokes. Pavin, who fired a PGA TOUR record nine-hole score of 26 in the first round and tied the 36-hole TOUR low (125), finished at 20-under 260 to tie 2005 U.S. Bank Championship champion Ben Crane’s 72-hole scoring mark.

But to Pavin, who last won the 1996 Bank of America Colonial, all that mattered was getting back to the winner’s circle.

Before a recent resurgence the past two seasons, Pavin’s game was engulfed in a seven-year funk. In five of those seasons, he failed to crack the top 125 in earnings.

“You don’t go through six or seven lean years without having some doubts and extremely low points,” Pavin said. “That’s just part of what I have been going through.”

Pavin’s wife of 3½ years, Lisa, agreed. She was one of the first to greet her husband with several Xs and Os during his impromptu celebration on the 18th green.

“It’s been a tough last few years,” Lisa Pavin said. “He’s had a lot of ups and downs, career-wise as well as personal-wise. It’s nice to get back on track.”

Pavin, 46, did that in a variety of ways.

He hit his trademark fade all week, seemingly controlling each approach on a string. Pavin didn’t make a bogey until his 40th hole and carved up Brown Deer Park with 21 birdies and an eagle that may have won the tournament.

His 6-iron approach from 175 yards on the par-4 eighth hole during the final round took one bounce and rolled in for a 2. Even the crowd, rooting hard for Kelly to become the first Wisconsin native to win in Milwaukee, erupted as their hometown hero dropped behind by four.

Corey Pavin had a great weekend of golf to win his second U.S. Bank Championship (WireImage)

“They don’t call him the bulldog for nothing,” Kelly said.

Pavin certainly lived up to his once famous nickname, making 11 straight pars on his way to victory. Pavin, who hit every green in regulation and putted 33 times Sunday, averaged an incredible 26.5 putts per round for the tournament.

“I’ve been rolling them in from all over the place this week,” Pavin said.

It helped him vault from 120th to 47th on the money list after collecting the $720,000 prize. For that, he needed some clutch putting, precise play and hours of hard work along the way.

“To me, these last 10 years and the journey mean everything to me,” Pavin said. "I always feel like every part of our lives mean something and they build character of some kind or you respond to them in some way. That’s what I feel like happened over these 10 years.

“I’ve never given up on myself and it felt so good to prove it to myself that I could win.”