Honda Classic: Monday Playoff Notebook  PGA TOUR Staff PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- By prevailing in sudden death to win The Honda Classic Monday morning, Mark Wilson has earned his first career PGA TOUR victory in his 111th career PGA TOUR start at the age of 32 years, 5 months, 3 days old. He earned 4,500 FedExCup points, moving him to the seventh on the FedExCup points list with 4,991 points.  After 10 trips to Q-School, Mark Wilson finally got a PGA TOUR victory hug. (Sam Greenwood/PGA TOUR/WireImage)
• Wilson becomes the 10th first-time winner in Honda Classic history, and the fourth in the last seven years. His victory comes in the sixth playoff in tournament history, and the Wilson-Coceres-Weekley-Villegas playoff was the fourth of the 2007 season. • Wilson is the third first-time winner on the PGA TOUR in 2007. He joins Henrik Stenson, who won the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship, and Charley Hoffman, who won the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic • Wilson also goes into the history books by chalking up the 200th victory on the PGA TOUR by a Nationwide Tour alum. • With his victory, Wilson pockets $990,000, the largest check in his PGA TOUR career. He also earns a two-year exemption on the PGA TOUR through 2009, as well as spots in the 2007 PGA Championship, the 2007 PLAYERS Championship, the 2007 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational and the 2008 Mercedes-Benz Championship. • The four-man playoff was the first since the 2004 Reno-Tahoe Open, won by Vaughn Taylor over Scott McCarron, Steve Allen and Hunter Mahan. Wilson is now 1-0 in playoffs, while Jose Coceres is 1-2 and both Camilo Villegas and Boo Weekley are 0-1. • Jose Coceres was in back-to-back playoffs on the PGA TOUR, having lost to Fred Funk last week at the Mayakoba Golf Classic. His consolation prize, however, is that he has notched back-to-back top-10s for the first time in his PGA TOUR career. The last player to be in playoffs in back-to-back weeks was David Duval, who won the Michelob Championship at Kingsmill and the Walt Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic. • David Toms lost back-to-back playoffs at the 2001 TOUR Championship and the 2002 Mercedes Championships (last event of 2001 and first event of 2002). Sergio Garcia lost as well in the playoff at the 2001 TOUR Championship and then defeated Toms in the playoff at the season-opening Mercedes Championships in 2002. • Jose Coceres posted five straight birdies (Nos. 1-5) to open the final round, tying the longest consecutive birdie streak on TOUR this year. His 5-under-par 30 on the front nine is tied for the fourth-lowest score for nine holes through 10 events.
• Tripp Isenhour (T5) and Robert Allenby (T5) did most of their damage on the front nine -- Isenhour was 9 under par while Allenby was 10 under par. • Robert Allenby (T5) notched his TOUR-best fifth top-10 of the 2007 campaign this week. Charles Howell III and Jeff Quinney have four top-10s already this year, while Jim Furyk and David Toms both have three. 3 5 • The Jack Nicklaus-renovated Champion Course at PGA National played tough all week. The par-70 layout played to a scoring average of 72.838 on Thursday, 71.943 on Friday, 71.644 on Saturday and 70.589 on Sunday. Its cumulative scoring average was 71.958. Copyright 2007 PGATOUR.com. All rights reserved. |
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