Viking Classic: Final-Round Notebook  PGA TOUR Staff MADISON, Miss. -- PGA TOUR veteran Chad Campbell carded a final-round 69 on Sunday and captured the title at the Viking Classic by one shot over rookie Johnson Wagner. • Campbell came into the week ranked 160th on the 2007 PGA TOUR in Greens in Regulation. The Texas native finished the Viking Classic ranked first in Greens in Regulation on the week (58 of 72; 80.56 percent). Campbell also finished the week ranked sixth in Putting Average (1.672 putts per GIR).  Runner-up Johnson Wagner carded his best-ever PGA TOUR finish on Sunday. (Feldman/WireImage)
• Campbell becomes the third straight winner on the PGA TOUR to lead the event in Greens in Regulation (Steve Flesch at the Turning Stone Resort Championship; Tiger Woods at THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola). • To illustrate the importance of hitting the greens at Annandale Golf Club, simply look at the top players in Greens in Regulation on the week. Chad Campbell, Johnson Wagner, Shaun Micheel, Boo Weekley, Bill Haas, and Kent Jones all finished in the top 10 on the leaderboard and in Greens in Regulation. • Campbell's four-round total of 275 ties D.J. Trahan (2006) for the highest winning score in Viking Classic history. Campbell becomes the first player in the last 10 years to win the Viking Classic after not playing in the final group on Sunday. • PGA TOUR Rookie Johnson Wagner found himself in contention on Sunday before a late bogey at the par-4 17th derailed his chances at the title. The runner-up finish is the best of Wagner's TOUR career and virtually assures him of keeping his card for the 2008 season. • Wagner, a former Virginia Tech star, missed 12 of 13 cuts in a row after the horrific tragedy that struck the Blacksburg, Va., campus in April. Prior to that, Wagner had made eight of his first 11 cuts on the season. • Campbell came from three shots back at the start of the final round to win the Viking Classic; however, this is not the largest final-round comeback on the PGA TOUR this year. Padraig Harrington erased a six-shot deficit on Sunday to win the British Open in July. • Bill Haas' tie for third is the best of his PGA TOUR career. The third-year TOUR player was attempting to partner with his father and become the eighth father/son combo to win on the PGA TOUR. • The final-round scoring average of 72.873 ranks as the 14th most-difficult final-round average on the PGA TOUR in 2007. • The cumulative scoring average of 71.975 was the highest in tournament history since the event moved from Hattiesburg CC to Annandale CC in 1994. The previous high was 71.902, which was set last year. At the end of the week, the par-4 ninth played as the most difficult hole at Annandale with a stroke average of 4.192. • The round of the day came from 2006 Nationwide Tour Player of the Year Ken Duke, who fired a final-round 65, which featured a 31 on the front nine, which in turn tied the low score for Annandale's front nine on the week. This round also marks the career-low final round for Duke in a PGA TOUR event. • After Duke's 65, only three other players managed to record rounds below 70 on Sunday (69: Chad Campbell, Joe Durant, and Jesper Parnevik). • Fred Funk, the 2004 and 1998 Viking Classic champion, ended his impressive run of rounds below par at Annandale on Sunday with a round of 76. His streak reached 23 rounds before Sunday. • Third-round leader David Branshaw had a bit of history on his side that did not seem to help on Sunday. Four of the past five 54-hole leaders at the Viking Classic had gone on to claim the title the next day. • Alex Cejka's final-round 70 allowed him to record just his second top-10 finish of the 2007 PGA TOUR season and his first since the Zurich Classic of New Orleans (tie for eighth). • Cejka, while always listed as being from Germany, was born in the Czech Republic but fled at age nine as a refugee, traveling with his father to Yugoslavia, Italy, and Switzerland before settling in Munich, Germany. Cejka, who now lives in Prague with his family, considers himself to be German. |
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