Perry inches closer to his goal after 3-stroke victory
Kenny Perry has set a goal of winning 20 times before he leaves the PGA Tour.
The 48-year-old earned No. 14 on Sunday at the Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Conn., shooting a 63 to finish with a tournament-record 258, 3 strokes better than Paul Goydos and David Toms, two other 40-something golfers.
This was Perry's 11th victory since his 40th birthday.
"Six more wins is a lot of wins," he said. "I've won three last year, two this year already. Who knows? If I can get hot again, get on one of those streaks and sneak in two more by the end of the year, it might be very realistic."
The 48-year old Perry, whose bogey-bogey finish at Augusta kept him from winning the Masters in April, tied a course record with a 61 Thursday and led after each of the first two rounds here. But, he trailed by a stroke to Goydos heading into the final round.
He responded by shooting a 32 on the front nine and was up by 5 strokes heading to the par-4 15th.
Goydos, 45, made a 20-foot eagle putt from the fringe on 15 and birdied 16. But he missed his birdie putt on 17 to the right.
Perry birdied 15, and put the tournament away by making birdie on 17 after hitting a 164-yard approach to within 8 feet.
"Everyone kind of asks about the Augusta hangover deal," he said. "I guess I kind of shoved that aside a little bit. So that makes me feel pretty good."
Perry acknowledged he was thinking about the Masters as he played the back nine, and told himself to play aggressive.
"I knew that I had to keep making birdies," he said. "I wasn't going to let up. I wasn't going to play defensive golf. I learned something from that mistake."
LPGA Tour: Jiyai Shin picked up her fifth title in 11 months with a 7-stroke victory at the Wegmans LPGA in Rochester, N.Y.
Champions Tour: Lonnie Nielsen shot a 9-under 63 to beat Fred Funk and Ronnie Black by 3 shots in Endicott, N.Y., for his first Champions Tour victory of the year and second of his career. Nielsen, who turns 56 today, finished at 21-under 195, a record for the tournament.
European Tour: Nick Dougherty shot a final-round 64 to win the BMW International Open in Munich by 1 stroke. It was the third European Tour victory for the 27-year-old Englishman.