RICHMOND, Va. \u2014 Justin Leonard stayed patient with his putting on a windy Sunday and watched it pay big dividends with a birdie-par-eagle finished for a 4-under 68 and a one-shot victory over Ernie Els in the Dominion Energy Charity Classic.<\/p>\n
Leonard won for the second time this year on the PGA Tour Champions and moved into top 10 after the first playoff event for the Charles Schwab Cup.<\/p>\n
The top 54 advance to the second postseason event next week in Arkansas.<\/p>\n
Els was in control on the back nine of the James River course at the Country Club of Virginia and appeared to steady himself with birdies on reachable par-4 15th and the par-5 16th.<\/p>\n
But he bogeyed the 17th as Leonard made his move. After a birdie on the 16th, Leonard hit a hybrid 4-iron to about 20 feet and holed the downhill eagle putt to post at 12-under 204.<\/p>\n
Els failed to make a 10-foot birdie putt on the closing hole that would have forced a playoff. He closed with a 72 and shared second place with Thomas Bjorn (68).<\/p>\n
Bernhard Langer, the 68-year-old German who has won every year on the PGA Tour Champions since turning 50, was within two shots of the lead until a long three-putt bogey ended his hopes. He shot 72 and finished three back in his bid for a first Champions win this year.<\/p>\n
Scott Parel shot 71 and tied for 21st, moving up three spots to No. 53 to advance to the Simmons Bank Championship next week. David Bransdon fell out.<\/p>\n
The top 36 after next week reach the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RICHMOND, Va. \u2014 Justin Leonard stayed patient with his putting on a windy Sunday and watched it pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-237716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}