Round 4 Notes – Sony Open in Hawaii
Final-Round Notes – Sunday, January 13, 2008Weather: Partly cloudy with a high temperature of 74 degrees. Winds N/NE at 20-30 mph.
K.J. Choi carded a final-round 71 en route to winning the Sony Open in Hawaii on Sunday, the seventh PGA TOUR title of his career. With his win, Choi picked up 4,500 FedExCup points and moved into first on the 2008 FedExCup points list. With his runner-up finish, Rory Sabbatini collected 2,700 points and moved up to fourth on the list. The FedExCup points leader coming into the week, Daniel Chopra, fell one spot into second place after finishing T32 and collecting 133 points.
Prior to his closing birdie at the par-5 18th, Choi was on his way to becoming the first PGA TOUR winner to not record a single birdie in the final round since Justin Leonard did the same en route to winning the 2005 Stanford St. Jude Championship.
Choi’s wire-to-wire victory is the first on the PGA TOUR since Steve Flesch at last year’s Reno-Tahoe Open. Choi also becomes the third outright wire-to-wire winner in Sony Open history, joining Paul Azinger (2000) and Howard Twitty (1993).
Choi’s win today gives him at least one PGA TOUR title for the fourth consecutive year.
Consecutive seasons with at least one TOUR victory:
12 Tiger Woods (1996-2007)
6 Vijay Singh (2002-07)
4 K.J. Choi (2005-08)
Phil Mickelson (2004-07)
3 Jim Furyk (2005-07)
Rory Sabbatini’s runner-up finish came as a bit of a surprise given his record at the Sony Open. The four-time PGA TOUR winner had one top-25 finish in nine straight appearances coming into this week (2006 – T2).
Today’s finish marked the 11th runner-up finish of Sabbatini’s 10-year PGA TOUR career.
Jerry Kelly, the 2002 Sony Open champion, finished with a 67 on Sunday and his fifth top-10 at Waialae in 11 appearances. Kelly has bettered par in 22 of his last 25 rounds at the Sony Open.
Steve Stricker’s T4 finish was his fourth top-five finish in his last six starts on the PGA TOUR (dating back to his win at The Barclays). During that span, Stricker has gone from 10th in the Official World Golf Rankings to third. After recording only three top-10 finishes from the start of 2002 to the end of 2005, Stricker has now notched 18 top-10s since the start of the 2006 season.
George McNeill carded the round of the day with a four-under 66 in strong winds. The low round moved the 2007 Frys.com Open champion from T52 to T17.
McNeill and Jerry Kelly were the only the only players to record bogey-free rounds on Sunday.
In only his second career PGA TOUR start, former Walker Cup player Dustin Johnson notched his first top-10 with a T10 effort this week.
Top Rookies This Week:
Player Score Finish Exemption
Dustin Johnson 68-68-67-71—274 T10 Qualifying Tournament
Matt Jones 68-69-68-70—275 T17 Nationwide Tour
Y.E. Yang 69-68-69-70—276 T20 Qualifying Tournament
Chad Collins 67-70-73-67—277 T25 Nationwide Tour
Tim Wilkinson 68-69-62-78—277 T25 Qualifying Tournament
Chez Reavie 68-66-69-75—278 T32 Nationwide Tour
Brad Adamonis 66-68-70-74—278 T32 Qualifying Tournament
Alejandro Canizares 67-67-71-74—279 T40 Qualifying Tournament
Scott Sterling 70-69-69-72—280 T45 Nationwide Tour
Kevin Streelman 68-69-72-72—281 T50 Qualifying Tournament
Martin Laird 69-70-70-73—282 T55 Nationwide Tour
Three of the four Monday qualifiers made the cut this week at the Sony Open:
Player Score Finish
Doug LaBelle II 67-69-66-72—274 T10
Spencer Levin 67-68-73-72—280 T45
Mitsuhiro Tateyama 66-70-75-72—283 T61
Tournament statistical leaders:
Stat Player Average
Driving Distance J.B. Holmes 335.9 yards
Driving Accuracy Fred Funk 40 of 56 (71.43 %)
Greens in Regulation Chad Campbell 55 of 72 (76.39 %)
Putting Average Paul Azinger 1.605 putts per GIR
Scoring Averages:
Front 9 Back 9 Total
Thursday 35.264 34.257 69.521
Friday 35.259 34.909 70.168
Saturday 34.676 34.588 69.265
Sunday 36.544 35.618 72.162
The most difficult hole at Waialae Country Club this week was the par-4 13th, which played to an average of 4.286.
Sunday’s final-round scoring average of 72.162 is the highest single-round average at Waialae Country Club since 1997, when the course played to an average of 73.449 in the final round.
At the end of a windy day in Honolulu, only eight players managed to break par in the final round of the Sony Open: George McNeill, Chad Collins, Jerry Kelly, Steve Lowery, Jason Allred, James Driscoll, Rory Sabbatini, and Jim Furyk.
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