Golf

Record match seals win for Casey

By TIMES WIRES
Published September 18, 2006

VIRGINIA WATER, England - Paul Casey turned in a record-setting performance to win the World Match Play Championship on Sunday, just as everyone expected.

A tournament that began with Tiger Woods going for his sixth straight victory ended with Casey plowing through everyone in his path to capture the richest prize in golf and send him to the Ryder Cup with the biggest win of his career.

Casey never trailed in his final 71 holes of a marathon week at Wentworth, winning the final five against Shaun Micheel for a 10-and-8 victory, the largest margin of the final match in the 43-year history of the World Match Play Championship.

No other golfer has made winning roughly $1.88-million look so easy.

So dominant was Casey that he played only 126 holes, another record for fewest holes over four 36-hole matches.

Micheel knocked Woods out of the match play event during the first round Thursday.

PGA: Ben Curtis, start-to-finish steady on a day when the leaderboard was filled with higher scores than the previous three days, claimed a lame-duck tour event for the second time in three months by winning the 84 Lumber Classic by two shots. Curtis shot 2-under 70 to finish at 14-under 274 for his third tour title. Curtis won the last Booz Allen Classic in June, then won the fourth and last 84 Lumber Classic in Farmington, Pa.

Charles Howell III shot a 72 to finish second.

EUROPEAN PGA: Ian Poulter shot 3-under 69 to win the Madrid Masters by five strokes and claim his first European tour victory in two years. Poulter, whose last win came when he beat Sergio Garcia in a playoff at the 2004 Volvo Masters, finished with 22-under 266.

Ignacio Garrido, who shot 66, was second. Darren Clarke shot 72 to finish at 7 under overall. The Northern Irishman played his first tournament since the death of his wife Heather from breast cancer Aug. 13.

Garrido, playing in the fourth-to-last group, was the only player to pressure Poulter. But the Englishman birdied the 14th after Garrido closed the gap to three with a birdie at the par-5 16th.

CHAMPIONS: Bob Gilder shot 65, the lowest round of the day, to overcome a three-shot deficit and defend his title by two strokes over Brad Bryant, Don Pooley and Jay Haas in the final year of the Constellation Energy Classic in Hunt Valley, Md. Next year, the Senior Players Championship comes to nearby Baltimore Country Club.

Gilder posted a seven-birdie, no-bogey final round to finish at 14-under.

Bryant, seeking his third victory of the season, shot his third straight 68. Haas carded 68, and second-round leader Pooley settled for 70. It was Gilder's ninth Champions Tour win but only his second since 2003.

USGA SENIOR AMATEUR: Georgia golf store manager Bill Leonard shot 2-under 70 to share stroke-play medalist honors with Paul Simson, who shot 75 to match Leonard at 1-under 143 on the Victoria National Golf Club course in Newburgh, Ind.

The two led the 64 qualifiers for match play in the tournament for players 55 and older.

[Last modified September 18, 2006, 02:27:33]