Notebook: Round 4, Shell Houston Open

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Weather: Morning mist turning to mostly cloudy skies. High of 81. Winds SE 12-22 mph.

• Anthony Kim (70) and Vaughn Taylor (68) finished the Shell Houston Open tied at 12-under 276, with Kim prevailing with a par on the first playoff hole for his third PGA TOUR victory (2008 Wachovia Championship, 2008 AT&T National, 2010 Shell Houston Open). The win comes in his 78th TOUR start.

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Round 4 Wrap-up

• With the victory, Anthony Kim collects 500 FedExCup points and moves to No. 2 in the standings, 415 points behind leader Ernie Els. Els finished T44 in his third-career start at the Shell Houston Open (2003-T17, 2009-T14, 2010-T44).

• Anthony Kim becomes the fifth player under the age of 30 with three or more wins on the PGA TOUR, joining six-time winner Adam Scott and three-time winners Camilo Villegas, Dustin Johnson and Sean O'Hair. He is the sixth player in his 20s to win on TOUR in 2010, compared to just seven in 2009.

• Kim hit just 23 of 56 fairways this week, ranking last out of the 72 players who played all 72 holes this week. Dating to 1983, only three winners of official TOUR events have hit fewer:

• Over the course of history, the Shell Houston Open has had 21 playoffs?more than any event on TOUR other than the U.S. Open (32). Sunday's playoff was the first of the season (15 events). The 14-event start without a playoff represented the longest the TOUR has gone to start a season without a playoff since 1974 when Lee Elder won in a playoff in the 16th event of the year.

• Anthony Kim's win by the numbers: Is now two for four in carrying the 54-hole lead/co-lead on to victory (2008 Wachovia Championship, 2010 Shell Houston Open)...Win comes in his fourth consecutive start at the Shell Houston Open (2007-T5, 2008-MC, 2009-T26, 2010-1)...Is just the fourth player born in the United States among the last 12 Shell winners, joining 2001 champion Hal Sutton, 2003 winner Fred Couples and 2008 champion Johnson Wagner.

• Kim's victory comes on the same course where he (University of Oklahoma) posted an eight-stroke victory at the 2006 Hall of Fame Invitational, a collegiate event played the month before the Redstone Tournament Course hosted its first Shell Houston Open in 2006 (won by Stuart Appleby).

• Anthony Kim will be making his second career start at the Masters (2009-T20). The last player to win the week before the Masters and go on to don the Green Jacket was Phil Mickelson in 2006. Only three other players have done the same?Sandy Lyle (1988), Art Wall (1959) and Ralph Guldahl (1939). Sam Snead won the event before the Masters and then the Masters in 1949, but there was an open week in between.

• Throughout the last 17 years of the tournament (dating to 1994), just four players have recorded all four rounds in the 60s at the Shell Houston Open: Mike Heinen (1994), Vijay Singh (2002), Fred Couples (2003) and Stuart Appleby (2006). Anthony Kim's bogey on the 72nd hole on Sunday prevented him from joining the group.

• 54-hole leader Bryce Molder (74) finished T8 for his fourth top-10 finish of the season, topping his previous high of three in 2009. Molder's solid play has propelled him to No. 39 in the FedExCup standings.

• The third-round leader/co-leader has gone on to win eight of 14 times on TOUR this season, including the last five weeks (Camilo Villegas at the Honda Classic, Ernie Els at the WGC-CA Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Jim Furyk at the Transitions Championship and Anthony Kim at the Shell Houston Open).

• The 54-hole leader/co-leader has now won the Shell Houston Open eight out of the last nine years, dating to Vijay Singh's win in 2002. The lone exception came in 2007, when Adam Scott came from three strokes back on Sunday to win the event by three strokes over Stuart Appleby and 54-hole leader Bubba Watson.

• The runner-up finish by Vaughn Taylor is the third of his TOUR career, with one each of the last three years (2008 Ginn sur Mer Classic, 2009 Turning Stone Resort Championship, 2010 Shell Houston Open). The Augusta, GA resident and former Augusta State University standout fell just shy of earning a ticket to next week's Masters.

• Fred Couples, who entered the week with three victories in his last three starts on the Champions Tour, posted a final-round 68 to finish T55. He made his 18th start this week at the Shell Houston Open, with six top-10 finishes and a victory in 2003. Next week will represent Couples' 26th start at the Masters. After making 23 consecutive cuts to open his Masters career, the 1992 champion has missed the last two cuts at the Augusta National.

• There were 29 players in the Shell Houston Open field this week also in next week's Masters Tournament. Of those, 21 made the 36-hole cut, led by champion Anthony Kim.

• A couple of sponsor exemptions, courtesy of Shell, posted top-five finishes this week: Charl Schwartzel (T3) and Shaun Micheel (5th). For Micheel, it was his first top-10 finish on TOUR since the 2007 Viking Classic (T5).

• The top Australian this week was Adam Scott, with a T14 finish. Aussies have had a great deal of success in the Shell Houston Open, winning eight times?Bruce Devlin (1972), Bruce Crampton (1973, 1975), David Graham (1983), Stuart Appleby (1999, 2006), Robert Allenby (2000) and Adam Scott (2007)

• Phil Mickelson (71/T35) made his way through a roller-coaster round on Sunday with three double bogeys (Nos. 4, 7, 10) and seven birdies -- including six in a row on Nos. 11-16 to equal the best birdie streak of the season (Matt Every, Nos. 17-4, R1, Waste Management Phoenix Open).

• Phil Mickelson's caddie for part of his final-round 1-under 71 was Dr. Tom Buchholz, a member of the team of doctors treating his wife, Amy, at Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

• Kevin Stadler (67-70-74-68/T6) and James Driscoll (68-70-73-71/T14) were paired together all four rounds this week.

• Houston resident Jeff Maggert finished T6 in his 22nd start at the Shell Houston Open. After missing the cut in his first start in 1987, Maggert has made 21 consecutive appearances (a streak which began in 1990), joining John Mahaffey and Jack Burke Jr. with the most consecutive starts in tournament history. He now has six top-10 finishes at the Shell Houston Open and three runner-up finishes (1994, 1996, 1998).

• Past champions of the Shell Houston Open who teed it up this week: Adam Scott (T14), Stuart Appleby (T44), Fred Couples (T55), Johnson Wagner (71) and Vijay Singh (WD).

• 1999 and 2006 Shell Houston Open champion Stuart Appleby finished T44. He needed to win this week to continue his streak of starts in Major Championships, a streak which began in 1997 and reached 52 consecutive starts after his missed cut at the 2009 PGA Championship.

• The season-long $1 million Kodak Challenge featured the 488-yard, par-4 18th hole this week, which provided a dramatic conclusion with Vaughn Taylor draining a nearly 20-foot birdie putt to eventually land in a playoff, and then Anthony Kim parring the hole in the playoff to win. Through the Shell Houston Open, Rickie Fowler, Matt Kuchar and Kevin Na share the lead at 6-under.

• Since 2006, 265 balls have found the lake on the left side of the 18th hole (not including J.B Holmes in 2009 playoff). Included in that total is 53 balls in the water this week (24/Round 1, 18/Round 2, 4/Round 3, 7/Round 4).

• • Bogey-free rounds on Sunday were turned in by Charl Schwartzel (67/T3), Graham DeLaet (68/T3), Jeff Maggert (70/T6), Matt Kuchar (70/T8) and Rich Barcelo (69/T31).

• Scoring Averages at Redstone Golf Club:

• Stat leaders for the week: