GOLF ROUNDUP : Mediate Recovers to Win at Greensboro

Rocco Mediate said he gained valuable experience this week. The eight-year PGA Tour veteran also added $270,000 when he birdied the fourth playoff hole Sunday to beat Steve Elkington and win the $1.5-million Greater Greensboro Open in North Carolina.

“I’ll be able to draw on this playoff for the rest of my career. That’s what it’s all about,” said Mediate, whose other victory came in a playoff in the 1991 Doral Open.

“This is a huge springboard. It’s like a cannon.”

Mediate, who led the Greensboro Open after three rounds last year, overcame a double bogey on the par-five 15th hole and then had to save pars on the second and third extra holes from sand traps before sinking a four-foot putt to finish it.

Mediate trailed 54-hole leaders Elkington and Mike Sullivan by four strokes and had the biggest final-day move by a tournament winner this season. He closed with a three-under-par 69 for a four-day total of 281.

Elkington, the 1990 Greensboro winner, shot a 73 on Sunday. He bogeyed Nos. 15 and 16 to fall a shot behind, but made a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to force the playoff.

“I felt like I sort of lost the tournament earlier on, when I drove it in the rough on 14, 15 and 16,” Elkington said. “I had control of the tournament at that point.”

With winds gusting to 30 m.p.h., the players took turns scrambling in the playoff. Elkington sank a four-foot putt for par on the first playoff hole, and Mediate got up and down from the sand to save par on the second extra hole.

Elkington could have ended the match on the 18th hole, the third of the playoff, when his approach shot landed 10 feet from the pin. From out of a fairway bunker, Mediate’s shot went over the green, but he chipped to six feet and made the par putt.

Elkington missed his birdie try.

“When I made the putt on 18 to stay alive I felt really, really good. I was laughing,” Mediate said.

They returned again to the 16th hole to continue the playoff, but this time Mediate won it.

Sullivan, who led for the first three rounds, ballooned to a final-round 77 and finished at three-under 285.

Dave Stockton, playing bogey-free golf for the first time this week, shot a six-under-par 66 and breezed past second-round leader Harold Henning to a four-stroke victory in the senior tour’s Reunion Pro-Am at Frisco, Tex.

His closing round on a windswept day was the lowest of the tournament and one stroke off the course record, shared by Gene Littler and Tom Shaw in 1991.

Stockton, 51, earned $75,000 for his first victory of the season.

Henning, who began the day with a two-stroke lead, closed with a 72 and finished as one of only two players with a sub-par total in the 54-hole event.