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Stricker breaks through for title after several near misses

FORT WORTH, TEXAS — Steve Stricker discovered the secret Sunday to ending a 74-hole birdiefest at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial.

Head to the 17th hole.

For Stricker, the journey down the par-4 hole at Colonial Country Club paid dividends twice during a final round marked by momentum shifts and lead changes. Stricker, the No. 13 player in the world golf rankings, applied the exclamation point to the proceedings with a 4-foot birdie putt on the 17th green, ending a three-man playoff on the second extra hole.

But Stricker never would have been in the playoff with Tim Clark and Steve Marino if he had not buried a pressure-packed, 56-foot chip for birdie at No. 17 in regulation. That shot sent all three players into the extended session with scores of 17-under par, two strokes short of the tournament scoring record.

“Looking back, the chip-in at 17 … was the deal where I was able to win,” Stricker said. “I was losing some momentum. You don’t expect to chip a shot like that in, especially on the 71st hole. I was thinking, if I could chip in, maybe … we could get in a playoff or steal (the tournament).”

The win broke a two-year winless streak for the Edgerton native.

After his decisive birdie putt dropped, Stricker said he thought back to 2005, when he was struggling to keep his PGA Tour card and Colonial officials gave him a sponsor’s exemption. He finished 13th that year, helping jump-start a career stuck in neutral.

“I haven’t forgot that,” said Stricker, whose voice cracked with emotion as he reflected on what winning a Colonial title meant to him. “I got a sponsor’s exemption here at a time when I needed it. It’s funny how it comes back around in a circle.”

Stricker, who had held the lead at eight tournaments after two rounds before falling back, said the pressure of winning builds as the holes go by.

“It’s always tense coming down the stretch,” Stricker said. “That’s what makes winning difficult and hard to do. Sometimes we take for grranted what Tiger (Woods) has done, or what Phil (Mickelson) has done.

“You know they make it look fairly simple at times, and for the average player out here, it’s a very difficult thing to do.”

Stricker started the day on a roll. Trailing Clark by two strokes at the start of the round, Stricker birdied No. 5 and No. 6.

But he followed those up with bogeys on No. 7 and No. 8.

He had a bad break on No. 7 when his drive came to rest on the lip of a bunker.

“I tried to bite off more than could chew there trying to get it on the green,” Stricker said. “I was lucky the ball didn’t come back and hit me in the leg or somewhere else, because I hit the lip and it came back in the bunker really quick.

“Then I three-putted No. 8, so I was back to even real quick.”

After the three-putt, Stricker admitted he was down.

“You feel like you are letting the tournament slip away,” he said. “But there are still 10 holes to play, and I just hung in there and kept doing the things I’ve been doing all week.”

Stricker bounced back to birdie two par-4s, No. 10 and No. 12. But then he missed a putt on the par-3 16th and appeared out of the tournament.

“The shot that upset me the most is that little putt at 16,” Stricker said. “I hit a decent shot I there over the green. I missed it on the correct side and putted it down there to a couple of feet, and then to missed that after missing birdie putts at 14 and 15, that really felt like it was slipping away.

But then came No. 17, a hole he’ll never forget. Stricker birdied the par-4 hole four of the five times he played it this weekend.

Stricker was behind the sloping green, but got some encouragement from a fan behind chipping in.

“”I was thinking about chipping in, and a guy said in the stands, ‘Chip it in,’ and it really made me think and focus on trying to do that.”

Stricker, who said he had a “perfect lie” for his chip-in.

“All I had to do was lob it up and get it rolling down there,” Stricker said. “It was kind of feeding down to the hole the whole way.”

In the playoff, all three players parred the first hole—No. 18. They went back to 17, and Stricker was the shortest off the tee using an iron.

But he drilled his second shot with an 8-iron to with four feet of the cup.

“I felt good with the number,” Stricker said. “I had four yards further the second time around. The wind wasn’t as goofy as it was the first time around. It was the way it should have been. You know, I took dead aim. I tried to hit it in there, and I pulled it off.”

Clark had only himself to blame after missing a pair of putts on the 18th green—a par putt in regulation, a birdie attempt in the playoff—that would have secured his first PGA Tour title. Instead, Clark settled for the seventh runner-up finish of his career and his second in two years at Colonial. He remains winless in 134 starts in PGA Tour events.

Unlike in 2008, when Clark was preparing for a playoff that was preempted by “Mickelson’s Miracle” on the 72nd hole, Clark had a plaid jacket within his grasp Sunday as he headed to the 18th tee in regulation, clinging to a one-stroke lead. But he drove into the left rough, chipped out to the middle of the fairway and could not save par from 13 feet, taking his fourth bogey of the final round after having only two in his first 54 holes.

Clark compounded his frustration in his return up No. 18, the first playoff hole. He pushed a 7-foot birdie attempt past the left edge, sending the playoff to No. 17—the hole that looms today as Stricker’s favorite on the Colonial layout.

Stricker, 42, secured his fifth tour victory and a $1,116,000 payday.

For Marino, the disappointment was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he struggled to post a bogey on the second playoff hole. Clark, however, hit the flagstick with his approach and watched the ball backtrack to 22 feet below the hole. When he slid that putt past the hole, Stricker quickly closed out the tournament.

“I saw how close Steve hit it (to the pin) and knew I had to do something like that,” Clark said of his playoff approach at No. 17 that caromed off the flagstick.

“Bad break or not, the tournament should have ended on the first playoff hole. I didn’t make a confident stroke and I pulled it. … I can’t take anything positive from today. I have a lot of work to do when it comes to closing out golf tournaments.”

Stricker, meanwhile, sealed the deal with a couple of rewarding trips down No. 17. His triumph capped a Colonial in which 17 golfers went double-digit deep into red numbers (10 under or better), the most in tournament history. The previous high was 12, in 2005.

Among the five lowest 72-hole totals in tournament history, three belong to Sunday’s playoff participants. The others were posted by Kenny Perry, who set the tournament record (19 under) while winning in 2003 and matched it during his 2005 victory.