A 5-foot par putt at the second play-off hole came between Australian great Peter Senior and eventual winner Tom Lehman at the Regions Tradition Classic, the first major of the year on the Champions Tour.
Senior, who had surged to the top of the leaderboard with an impressive 4-under round of 68, finished tied at 13-under par with Lehman, 2 ahead of American Loren Roberts and a further shot ahead of Michael Allen.
Lehman, who relied on his sublime short game to get up-and-down from behind the 18th green at the first play-off hole, watched anxiously as Senior’s 15-foot birdie putt for victory trickled past the edge of the cup and refused to drop.
“It looked like it was going to go to the left and it was on the right edge of the hole, and the last 3 feet it just went dead straight” Senior said. “I really thought with 3 feet to go I’d definitely holed it, but it stayed straight. It was pretty disappointing”.
Following his near miss at the first play-off hole, it was Senior’s 17-year old caddy and son, Mitchell who lifted his spirits and put a smile back on Peter’s face.
“I’ve always been a little disappointed on the course when things aren’t going right, but Mitch has just been absolutely fantastic” Senior said. “We’ll be walking around, I’ll be muttering to myself, and he’ll say, ‘Gee, how many of these girls are looking at me today, Dad”.
Senior will almost certainly take confidence from this, his third Top 10 finish in six starts on the Champions Tour in 2011. He has yet to finish worse than 17th and now finds himself in 6th place on the Charles Schwab Cup standings after 8 events. Senior is only 62 points adrift of his 2010 mark and with most of the season still to play should be extremely confident that he can finish well above last year’s 26th place finish.
“I had a really great week” Senior said. “You couldn’t have asked for better weather, and the course was a joy to play. All in all I played pretty well, and I’m really happy with the way I’m going”.