Stewart Cink successfully defended his title in The Ally Challenge for his second PGA TOUR Champions victory of the year, beating Ernie Els with a par on the first hole of a playoff Sunday.
Cink closed with a 4-under 68, birdieing two of the last three holes, to match Els at 15-under 201 at Warwick Hills. Els parred the final five holes in a 69.
The 52-year-old Cink won the Insperity Invitational in May in Texas, beating Retief Goosen in a playoff. He won eight times on the PGA TOUR, topped by The Open Championship in 2009.
Cink opened with a 62 and shot a 71 on Friday to enter the final round a stroke behind Els.
Trailing by two strokes with three holes remaining, Cink closed birdie-birdie-par to force a playoff against 36-hole leader Els.
Cink made par on the first playoff hole (No. 18) to defeat the World Golf Hall of Fame member. It was the first playoff in the eight-year history of The Ally Challenge.
“Well, this is one way that when a win happening in this fashion, I’m not sure if it adds or subtracts years off your life because it’s pretty stressful, but if you’re the one that wins, if you’re on that side of the stick on this thing, then it feels great.
“It was a lot of fun. I mean, putted great down the stretch. Ernie wasn’t doing anything wrong and he was just in the wrong place today because I had just enough at the end to overtake him.
“I really played very well on the back nine today, I really did. I don’t know how many birdies I made but it was a lot of birdies on the back.
I made a bogey on 15. It felt like once I missed the fairway on 16, felt like the wind might come out of my sails, but we got a little opening, me and Chris, down the right on 16 out into the seventh fairway which gave us a pretty simple shot really from the other fairway and took advantage of that.”
Darren Clarke shared twelfth place on eight-under-par while Padraig Harrington was in 53rd on one-under.
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