2011 Review: Fast start, consistency key for Lehman

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Chris Condon/PGA TOUR

Tom Lehman sprinted out early in the Schwab Cup race, then consistency got him to the finish line.

The Champions Tour season proved, once and for all, that sometimes the hare does get to the finish line before the tortoise.

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Tom Lehman's fast start to the 2011 season got him to the top in a hurry and it was good enough to keep him there in November but not without a few palpitations at the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

It also demonstrated -- through the performance of Jay Don Blake -- that there's plenty to play for in the final weeks of the campaign for those who don't kick it into gear until late in the year.

Lehman finished atop the Money List and won the Charles Schwab Cup thanks to three victories in the first five months of the year. He won the Allianz Championship, the Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic and the first major of the season, the Regions Tradition. It put Lehman in command and it looked like he couldn't be caught. However, as the season began to heat up, things changed. But although Lehman didn't win again he didn't fall asleep either, like the hare in Aesop's Fables, on his way to the finish line.

Lehman kept moving steadily toward the goal and that was imperative because, like in the child's tale, there was a fox waiting at the end to greet the winner. It was Mark Calcavecchia, who carved out a masterful series of finishes.

At the end, Lehman's finish at TPC Harding Park, a tie for 18th, meant he had to have some help to keep the relentless Calcavecchia at bay. And Lehman got it when Jay Haas, Michael Allen and Loren Roberts matched Calcavecchia's runner-up finish to split the second-place pie into enough pieces to deprive Calcavecchia of enough points to catch Lehman.

Lehman claimed the Arnold Palmer Award as the leading money winner ($2.08 million) and is favored to win the Player of the Year Honors.

Blake's victory was an enormous factor in Lehman's ultimate win. It was Blake's second victory in five events. The win at the Songdo IBD Championship in Korea was his first in 20 years since the 1991 Shearson Lehman Brothers Open. Blake needed just seven weeks to get his second on the Champions Tour and claim the 880 points in the Charles Schwab Cup race. It catapulted him to fourth place in the season-long competition and was worth $200,000 to go along with the $1.53 million in official money for the year.

Calcavecchia finished second on both the Money List and the Charles Schwab Cup. His success was based on consistency. He had 15 top 10 finishes in 22 events, three more than Lehman and Peter Senior. Calcavecchia's only victory came at the Boeing Classic. He faced difficult odds in his pursuit of Lehman at Harding Park but almost got it done.

"Looked like Calc had a great chance of doing it, of taking it all one fell swoop at the end," Lehman said. "He played great. Really, really impressed with the way he played and the way he battled.

"He shot even par the first day I played with him and it could have been 80. He just hung in there so well and overcame a bunch of mistakes and obviously played well throughout the week. To come in here knowing you have to finish second or better and finish tied for second with just one too many guys was pretty impressive. Hats off to him."

Lehman hung in, too, despite a winless second-half of the season. He did it with a solid stretch beginning with his runner-up finish at the 3M Championship, followed by a fourth at the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship.

"I had a really good first half of the season," Lehman said. "I putted beautifully. The second half didn't putt quite as well. Really, quite frankly, these double-points tournaments are where you make up your ground. I knew if I had good weeks I could almost put the thing away by the late summer and didn't."

In the meantime, Calcavecchia was cutting into Lehman's point margin with big weeks in the majors -- three top 5 finishes, including a runner-up at the Senior British and third at the U.S. Senior Open in successive weeks.

"A lot of double points, it adds up in a hurry," Lehman said of Calcavecchia's charge.

Lehman won the Charles Schwab Cup by 74 points after starting the final week with a 382-point margin.

Blake became the eighth player to win the Schwab Cup Championship in his first appearance and ended John Cook's two-year domination. Blake also joined Lehman, Cook and Fred Couples as a multiple winner on the Champions Tour this year. Couples and Blake reached multiple victories by winning the last two events on the schedule.

Between them, Couples and Blake won four of the final seven events with first-time winners Calcavecchia, Kenny Perry (SAS Championship) and Brad Faxon (Insperity Championship) claiming the other three.

"The win in Korea really helped," Blake said. "Very emotional. Very hard-fought. Four-man playoff. To have that win, that meant a lot. It was pretty important to get one. And finally the second one so close after it's a big plus to do that.

"All year long I felt like I played well. I had a lot of good tournaments. I had some chances in contention quite a few times. I had a lot of the top 10s. I've had a pretty solid year ... and coming here with the top 30 players, it's pretty special to win with this kind of a field here."

Major championship review

Lehman starts with a rush Tom Lehman's third victory of the season came in the first week of May at the Regions Tradition when he defeated Peter Senior with a par on the second playoff hole at Shoal Creek. It was Lehman's second Champions Tour major and both came in playoffs. He beat Fred Couples and David Frost on the first extra hole of the 2010 Senior PGA Championship. Lehman and Senior surged past 54-hole leader Mark Calcavecchia, who shot a final round 75 and tied for ninth. Lehman made a key par save at the 17th hole, after hitting his drive into trees, to preserve his share of the lead and set up the playoff victory. Watson Wins. Again. Ten years after winning the Senior PGA Championship for the first time, Tom Watson repeated the feat at Valhalla Golf Club. Watson, 61, became the second oldest to win a major championship when he made birdie on the first hole of sudden-death against David Eger. Watson shot a 2-under 70 in the final round to match Eger's 10-under 278 total. Watson was the only player in the field with all four rounds (70-70-68-70) under-par. His game wasn't clicking when he arrived in Louisville but said he flipped a switch and started to hit the ball much better. The win was the 14th of Watson's Champions Tour career and his sixth senior major. Cochran's comeback Left-hander Russ Cochran returned with a flourish after missing two months with a wrist injury. In his first event back, Cochran tied for 10th at the Nature Valley First Tee Open at Pebble Beach. He went from the Monterey Peninsula to England to win his first Champions Tour major, the Senior British Open at Walton Heath. Cochran held off Mark Calcavecchia and Tom Watson for the title. "I liked him better when he was injured," Calcavecchia said after Cochran fired a final round 5-under 67. Cochran built a 5-shot lead and cruised to the victory, his third on the Champions Tour. Browne in Buckeyeland In the stifling heat of an Ohio summer, Olin Browne kept his cool to win the U.S. Senior Open. Browne held off major champion Mark O'Meara down the stretch in what became a match play affair. "I've got zero experience in match play," Browne said. "But it's about putting your ball in play, keeping it out of the junk. The bottom line is minimize your mistakes, maximize your effort, and that's all you can do." Browne's exceptional putting was highlighted by a 30-foot birdie putt on the final hole, which ended a stretch of 141 tournaments (PGA TOUR and Champions Tour) since his last victory at the 2005 Deutsche Bank Open. Freddie's back Figuratively and literally. Fred Couples returned from an extended layoff during which he traveled to Germany for treatment on his ailing back and won the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship at Westchester Country Club. It was Couples' first victory of the year and his first major on the Champions Tour. Couples won in a playoff over John Cook. The victory put Couples in elite company. He became only the third player, joining Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd, to win both THE PLAYERS and the Senior Players. With the victory, Couples earned an invitation to THE PLAYERS in 2012 at Pete Dye's TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, where he is a two-time winner.