Wire-to-wire winner
Steady Mark Calcavecchia holds off charge from Bernhard Langer to capture his first Champions Tour victory in three years.
Mark Calcavecchia emerged from some of the wildest late-round swings in the 13-year history of the tournament to forge a twostroke victory over Bernhard Langer at the Boca Raton Championship on Sunday at the Old Course at Broken Sound.
While his first Champions Tour victory in three years — and only his second since 2011 — goes down as the first wire-to-wire win of his career, Calcavecchia survived only after putting his tee shot in the water at the par-3 16th hole
and watching the typically unflappable Langer stumble to a bogey-bogey finish.
“Sometimes the good Lord pencils you in and this week was meant to be,” said Calcavecchia, who shot 70 to finish at 16-under 200.
The victory came two months after
Calcavecchia underwent a rhizotemy, a surgical procedure to sever the nerve roots in the spinal cord, in an effort to address back pain so severe he had contemplated quitting. He opened with back-to-back rounds of 67 in Hawaii last month before painful foot blisters led to a closing 80 and a 36th-place finish.
Dozens of rounds with fellow Tequesta resident Russ Cochran in recent weeks had Cochran and his three golf-playing sons convinced Calcavecchia’s game was where it needed to be.
“We figured if he could eliminate a couple mistakes he’s definitely playing good enough to win,” said Cochran, who had the day’s low round of 65 Sunday to finish fifth.
Rounds of 64 and 66 staked Calcavec
chia to a two-stroke lead over Langer heading into Sunday, and he stretched that to four with birdies on his first three
holes. It was still four at the turn, but Langer posted birdies at Nos. 10 and 12 to cut the deficit in half, and when Cal-
cavecchia knocked a 90-foot putt off the green at No. 14 and came away with bogey it become one.
After watching Langer put his tee shot on the par-3 16th in the middle of the green, Calcavecchia hit his poorest shot of the tournament, chunking a 6-iron into the water.
He headed to the drop area, hit a pitching wedge to 15 feet and then sized up a bogey putt almost identical to the birdie putt Langer faced. After Langer missed left, he stepped up and knocked it in, leaving the two tied.
“I knew I had a pretty good read on it,” he said. “Bern- hard clearly didn’t know it was going that far left and I kind of knew it was.”
Langer, who had made only two bogeys in the 52 holes the Boca Raton resident had played until then, then made two on his final two holes. The first came after his second shot found the right bunker and he blasted out to 4 feet, then pushed the putt to the right.
“Just made a bad stroke,” Langer said. “I’d been putting very poorly all week, really. If I’d putted well, I would have been 20 under or more. It wasn’t the case.”
Langer then made a mess of No. 18, pushing his drive into mulch right of the fair- way, pulling his second shot into a bunker 60 yards short of the green, blasting out to a greenside bunker, then failing to get up-and-down from there and finishing with a 70. Calcavecchia flubbed a pitch but got up-and-down from just off the green for par and a two-shot win.
The win, which earned him $240,000, was his first of note with wife Brenda serving as his caddie, and the two celebrated with a kiss and a warm embrace.
“This is the first time we’ve won, and we’ve had quite a few opportunities,” he said. “Finally we did it together. It’s been bothering me. It gets in your head: I can’t win with her, why is she still caddying for me? I fired her twice, she’s quit 20 times. But she hates spectating. She still enjoys it, so she’s really happy.”