HOUSTON (Texas), Nov 10: PGA Championship runner-up Chad Campbell took his first tour title here on Sunday at the Tour Championship while Vijay Singh won the US PGA money title and Tiger Woods slumped to a lackluster 26th place.
Campbell fired a final-round three-under par 68 to finish on 16-under par 268, three strokes ahead of fellow American Charles Howell, four ahead of South Africa’s Retief Goosen and five better than Chris Riley.
After a birdie-eagle finish to the front-nine gave him a five-stroke lead, Campbell simply avoided making too many mistakes to win the 1.08 million-dollar top prize from the season-ending showdown of the year’s 30 top money winners.
Fiji’s Singh fired a 68 to share fifth place with Davis Love at 276. Singh won 228,000 dollars to finish with 7,573,907 dollars with Woods, who won the past four season money titles, second at 6,673,413 dollars.
Woods, who needed to win to keep his money crown, finished with a woeful 74 to stand on one-over 285. He settled for being escorted off the course by former US President George Bush.
Final round scores :
268 Chad Campbell 70 69 61 68
271 Charles Howell III 67 67 67 70
272 Retief Goosen (South Africa) 69 67 67 69
273 Chris Riley 69 68 66 70
276 Vijay Singh (Fiji) 73 68 67 68, Davis Love III 73 67 67 69
277 Jonathan Kaye 69 70 68 70
278 Jim Furyk 71 71 67 69
279 Scott Verplank 71 71 69 68, Kenny Perry 67 73 70 69, Steve Flesch 71 68 67 73, Fred Funk 68 67 71 73
280 Bob Tway 72 68 72 68, Jerry Kelly 68 74 70 68, Briny Baird 69 72 71 68, Robert Allenby (Australia) 69 73 68 70
281 Ernie Els (South Africa) 70 69 73 69
282 Darren Clarke (Britain) 74 68 67 73
283 K.J. Choi (South Africa) 77 68 70 68, Mike Weir (Canada) 72 73 67 71
284 Brad Faxon 76 71 71 66, David Toms 69 69 74 72, Kirk Triplett 70 71 72 71, Justin Leonard 69 69 73 73, Chris DiMarco 68 70 71 75
285 Tiger Woods 70 70 71 74
286 Stuart Appleby (Australia) 71 76 69 70
288 J.L. Lewis 75 68 71 74
289 Jay Haas 77 71 70 71
293 Nick Price (Zimbabwe) 73 69 75 76
299 Tim Herron 79 69 74 77 — AFP/Reuters