Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke tasted victory at the PGA Tour Champions’ American Family Insurance Championship for the second-straight year as he and team-mate Ben Crane edged home by one shot.<\/p>\n
Clarke, who won the Tour’s only team event with Thomas Bjorn last year, had a new partner this time with Crane filling in for the injured<\/p>\n
Dane and they finished on 30-under at TPC Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, one shot ahead of United States’ pair Kenny Perry and George McNeill.<\/p>\n
Clarke and Crane finished first in the event that was contested by 38 two-man teams which was played on a four-ball format on Friday and Sunday, with a scramble format on Saturday and this is where they put themselves in the mix with a tournament record of 17-under to take the lead going into the final day.<\/p>\n
It took them a while to get into their groove on Sunday with their first birdie posted on the seventh, but remained in the mix with three birdies on the back nine.<\/p>\n
Crane missed a long par putt to win on the last, but Clarke rolled in his to seal the victory.<\/p>\n
“It was a hard day for us both and we both stepped up and made some clutch putts and clutch shots when we really had to down the stretch,” said Clarke.<\/p>\n
“We said at the start of the week, our goal was to get ourselves in the mix on the back nine on Sunday and that’s what we did.”<\/p>\n
Crane paid tribute to the 2011 Open and four-time Ryder Cup winner’s resolve for sinking the final putt under pressure to seal the win.<\/p>\n
“He stepped up there; it was unbelievable,” said the American.<\/p>\n
“It was so much fun. You can see why this guy’s won Ryder Cup after Ryder Cup. It’s just elite golf, elite mentally.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s Tom McKibbin played his part in helping Legion XIII win the team at competition LIV Golf Andalucia – six shots clear of 4Aces GC and Torque GC – taking a share of the $3million prize.<\/p>\n
The Holywood golfer finished the individual event in a tie for 21st place on two-over, which was won by his Legion X111 team-mate Tyrrell Hatton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke tasted victory at the PGA Tour Champions’ American Family Insurance Championship for the second-straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-627534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}