Lehman Wins 2019 Mitsubishi Electric Championship

Tom Lehman entered Saturday’s final round trailing overnight leader David Toms by four shots before closing with a 7-under 65 for a 17-under total and a one-shot victory over David Toms. With the win and the $305,000 first-place check, Lehman takes the early lead in the season-long Charles Schwab Cup. The victory puts Lehman atop the Schwab Cup standings for the first time since winning the Cup for a second-straight year in 2012.

With the win, Lehman moves to T23 on the all-time victories list on PGA TOUR Champions with 12, tying Jim Dent. Notable players with 13 career victories include Fred Couples, Loren Roberts and Jim Thorpe.

In Lehman’s eight PGA TOUR Champions wins in 54-hole events, he has now come from behind in the final round to win five times. The four-shot deficit made up entering the final round is the largest in his career on PGA TOUR Champions or the PGA TOUR.

Lehman’s opening-round 69 matches the highest by a tournament winner (Miguel Angel Jiménez, 2015) at Hualalai Golf Course since the tournament became an expanded-field event in 1999.

David Toms three-putted the 54th and final hole for a closing bogey and a final-round 70 to fall one-shot shy of Lehman with a 54-hole total of 16-under 200.

In three career starts at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, Toms now owns three top-four finishes: T4 in 2017, third in 2018, runner-up in 2019.

The former LSU star now owns 19 top-10s in 45 career starts on PGA TOUR Champions. The runner-up is Toms’ second on Tour, dating back to a matching effort at last year’s Chubb Classic, where his near-miss to winner Joe Durant pushed him to the top of the early-season Charles Schwab Cup standings.

Three-time tournament champion Bernhard Langer posted rounds of 70-65-67—202 (14-under) for a T3 finish at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. The finish marked his 94th top-three finish on PGA TOUR Champions in 234 career starts. Langer now owns six top-three finishes in 12 career starts at the event.

Langer’s third-round 67 marked his 29th career round in the 60s at Hualalai Golf Course out of 35 total rounds.

Defending champion Jerry Kelly closed with a 5-under 67 for a T3 finish. His finish marks the best by a defending champion since John Cook (2011 champion) posted a matching T3 effort at the 2012 event.

The T3 finish marked Kelly’s 11th top-three effort in 45 career starts on PGA TOUR Champions. During his PGA TOUR career, Kelly notched three wins, posting top-four efforts in his title defenses at the 2003 Sony Open in Hawaii and BMW Championship

This marks the 19th year that the winner of this event has carded three rounds in the 60s (with the exception of 2017 when only two rounds were played) and the only player to post a round over par and win the event was Hale Irwin in 1997 when he shot a 1-over-par 73 in the opening round. However, winds were clocked at 35-40 mph in that first round.

Kevin Sutherland moved up 21 spots on the leaderboard and posted a T5 finish at 12-under 204. His final-round 63 included eight birdies and an eagle on the par-5 14^th.

Fred Couples posted a final-round 66 on Saturday. Although he has yet to win in Hualalai, the Newport Beach, California, resident has posted eight top-10 finishes in his 11 total starts.

Couples now has 10 straight years on PGA TOUR Champions with at least one top-10 finish. His last victory came at the 2017 American Family Insurance Championship.

Tom Watson’s T10 finish marked his first top-10 on PGA TOUR Champions since a solo-second-place finish at the 2015 PURE Insurance Championship. The finish was his best at Hualalai since a solo-third-place effort at the 2011 event.

With rounds of 71-70-71—212, Woody Austin continued his Tour-best streak of rounds at par-or-better to 30, dating back to a second-round 67 at the 2018 Boeing Classic.

The toughest hole of the round was the par-3 5^th, where only two birdies were recorded in the 42-man field and the average score was 3.405. Conversely, the easiest hole was the par-5 10^th with a scoring average of 4.214 and 29 birdies made throughout the round.