Michael Allen races out to five-shot lead at Encompass Insurance Pro-Am

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Michael Allen played the front nine in even par, then birdied the par-3 11th and made a 40-foot eagle putt on the par-5 12th on Saturday at TPC Tampa Bay.

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Series: Champions Tour

Michael Allen talked more about a pair of pars than an eagle as he took a commanding lead at the Encompass Insurance Pro-Am.

Allen shot a 4-under 67 on Saturday to take a five-stroke lead after the second round of the Champions Tour event.

"The key to the thing was I made two good pars," Allen said. "I hit a bad shot on 14. My second shot went into the water and I was able to get up and down from about 100 yards and make par. Then 17, I had to make about a 15-footer there and I was able to. So those two things were really nice."

Allen played the front nine in even par, then birdied the par-3 11th and made a 40-foot eagle putt on the par-5 12th. He finished with a birdie on the par-4 18th to reach 9 under at TPC Tampa Bay.

"Made the longest putt I've made all year," Allen said. "That was nice to make eagle there."

Allen won the 2009 Senior PGA Championship for his lone victory on the 50-and-over tour.

Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle, Corey Pavin and Olin Browne were tied for second. Langer and Pavin shot 71, Lyle had a 69, and Brown a 66.

"We all know how solid a player Michael Allen is," Lyle said. "He's pretty sound, and if gets hot, there will be some good scoring."

First-round leader Bruce Fleisher struggled, shooting a 78 to finish at 1 over. The 63-year-old Fleisher shot a 65 on Friday.

Fleisher had bogeys on Nos. 1 and 3, and a triple bogey on the par-4 fourth hole after hitting two balls into the water. He played even par on the back nine.

"When you make triples, it's hard (to recover)," Fleisher said. "Play good tomorrow and move on."

Tom Watson dropped out because of an injured right hand. He shot a 77 on Friday. Watson has had an issue with the arm recently, which he said earlier in the week has translated into a weak hand.

Andy Bean and Wayne Levi also withdrew Saturday because of back injuries. Nick Price (elbow) and Tommy Armour III (shoulder) both departed Friday.

After Pavin got to 7 under with a birdie at 14, he bogeyed the next three holes.

Chien Soon Lu, one shot off the lead entering Saturday, dropped to 3 over after a 79.

Kenny Perry, coming back from a viral infection, had eight birdies en route to a 67. He was 6 under before double bogeys at 15 and 18 left him at 3 under.

"A lot of good things happened to me," Perry said. "I had some strength. I actually felt like somebody today. I'm starting to feel better, so I'm excited about that. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and just the rest of the year."

Allen was only player Saturday to post a bogey-free round.

"The front nine I got off to a pretty good start," Allen said. "I thought I was playing pretty well, just the wind was blowing from different directions."

Jessica Korda prevails in six-way playoff to win Women's Australian Open

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Jessica Korda earned her first LPGA Tour victory in the same city where her father, Petr Korda, won the 1998 Australian Open in tennis.

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Series: LPGA Tour

MELBOURNE, Australia -- American teenager Jessica Korda won the Women’s Australian Open on Sunday for her first LPGA Tour title, holing a 25-foot birdie putt on the second hole of a six-player playoff.

The 18-year-old Korda completed a two-sport, father-daughter Australian double with the breakthrough victory in the LPGA Tour opener. Petr Korda won the 1998 Australian Open tennis tournament, also in Melbourne.

“It is a really special place for my family,” Korda said. “For my first win, I honestly could not have thought of a better place.”

Korda closed with a 1-over 74 to finish at 3-under 289 in the first women’s professional event at Royal Melbourne, the historic sand-belt layout that was the site of the 2011 Presidents Cup.

Stacy Lewis, Brittany Lincicome, Julieta Granada, So Yeon Ryu and Hee Kyung Seo also were in the playoff that matched the largest in LPGA Tour history.

Playing in threesomes on the par-4 18th, all six players opened the playoff with pars. On the second, Lewis, Lincicome, Granada and Seo made par and Ryu had a bogey.

Ryu and Seo, playing ahead of Korda and Nikki Campbell in the second-to-last group, topped the leaderboard at 4 under going into the final hole of regulation, but both closed with bogeys to shoot 73.

Lewis finished with a 70, and Lincicome and Granada shot 71.

Playing in the first playoff threesome, Lincicome had a good chance to win on the first extra hole, but her 6-foot birdie try circled the cup and stayed out.

“I couldn’t have hit it any better,” Lincicome said. “It was perfect, perfect speed. It was uphill. Lips out and comes back to you.”

She missed a 15-foot birdie try on the second extra hole.

“Same thing on the second putt, hit it exactly where I wanted to hit it and it just didn’t break,” Lincicome said.

After Korda made her birdie putt in the second group on the second playoff hole, Granada missed a 12-footer that would have sent the two back to the 18th tee.

“I was really calm,” Korda said. “I knew what the putt did because I’d had it before and it did not move. I was a little higher up and more to the right. I knew the line and I knew the speed. All I had to do was just hit it. It started breaking. I thought, `Oh, my goodness no, don’t lip out, don’t break too early.’ I don’t even know what side of the hole it hit. I was overwhelmed by everything.”

Making her 16th start as an LPGA Tour member, Korda began the round with a one-stroke lead and was two ahead at 7 under after birdieing three of the first eight holes.

She had a double bogey on No. 9, bogeyed 10, birdied 11, and bogeyed Nos. 14-16 to drop to 2 under, then rallied with a birdie on the par-5 17th and parred the 18th to get the final spot in the playoff.

“I thought, `You’ve got to be kidding me,”’ Korda said about the bogey run. “I was lipping out and not reading my putts correctly. But I thought, `Come on, you can still get it back.’ … I was walking down the fairway like an absolute goof. After I made the birdie, I was OK, like, `I can do this.”’

Projected to jump from 285th to 30th in the world ranking, she became the sixth youngest winner in LPGA Tour history and the fourth youngest to win a 72-hole event.

“All the times I was down last year, it is all worth it,” she said. “It made me grow up. It made me realize that you’ve got to change your life to live out here and this is proof. I know that all the hard hours I put in and will keep putting in are really worth it. Every moment.”

Jenny Shin finished a stroke out of the playoff at 2 under after a 70.

Top-ranked Yani Tseng, the winner the last two years at Commonwealth Golf Club, was 1 under after a 74. The Taiwanese star had a three-hole stretch Friday in her second-round 76 when she dropped six strokes with a quadruple-bogey 8 and two bogeys. On Sunday, she had a triple bogey on the par-4 fourth, and bogeyed 15 and 16.

“If I didn’t have the two bogeys late, I probably still would have had a chance,” Tseng said. “So it’s good that I hung in there and fought back.”

Katie Futcher also was 1 under after a 74.

DIVOTS: Korda earned $165,000. The five playoff losers each received $63,784. … The scoring average Sunday was 74.92 and the four-round total was 76.492. … The LPGA Tour will be Asia the next two weeks for the LPGA Thailand and HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore.

Barry Lane, at 52, leads 12 into British Open via four local final qualifying events

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Royal Lytham will be the 682nd European Tour appearance of Barry Lane's career, only 24 short of Sam Torrance's all-time record.

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Series: European Tour

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland -- Former Ryder Cup players Barry Lane and Paul Broadhurst, aged 52 and 46 respectively, both made it back into the British Open on Tuesday as a dozen players out of a field of 288 earned spots through four qualifiers played across England.

Broadhurst, whose round of 63 at St. Andrews in 1990 has still to be bettered in any major, won the 36-hole event at St. Annes Old with rounds of 70 and 67.

And with only three of the 72 players there going through to Royal Lytham in two weeks, Lane's second-round 70 enabled him to finish tied for second with Argentina's Rafa Echenique one behind on 6 under par.

Lytham will be the 682nd European Tour appearance of Lane's career, only 24 short of Sam Torrance's all-time record.

His Open debut came 25 years ago, and the last time he played was in 2006, while Broadhurst's debut was in 1988 -- he finished as low amateur -- and he last qualified three years ago.

Among those to miss out there were Chris Wood -- fifth in the 2008 Open as an amateur and then tied for third the following year at Turnberry -- and another ex-Ryder Cup player, Swede Jarmo Sandelin.

At Hillside, three English players came through -- former European Tour winner Warren Bennett, 2009 Walker Cup player Dale Whitnell and Kent's Steven Tiley.

Ex-Ryder Cup players Peter Baker and Mark James, Europe's Ryder Cup captain in 1999, failed along with James Conteh, son of former world boxing champion John Conteh.

Whitnell, from Tiptree in Essex, beat Bennett by one and Tiley by three on 9 under and was quickly tweeting, with expletive deleted: "Yes, yes, yes - the boy's gonna be playing in The Open."

Steve Alker won at West Lancashire on 7 under, but fellow New Zealander Michael Campbell, the U.S. Open champion seven years ago, shot level par -- five too many to be in a playoff with Scotland’s Steven O'Hara, Americans Scott Pinckney and Marty Jertson and St. Pierre amateur Richard Bentham. Jertson, a senior designer engineer for Ping Golf, earned a spot in the PGA Championship next month through his performance in the PGA Professional National Championship in California at the end of June.

Lane, who qualified with a chip-in eagle at the last, commented: "I can't wait to play in The Open again."

Broadhurst, who plays the French Open this week as a past champion, will be returning to the Open venue 24 years after winning the amateur Lytham Trophy.

"I'm going back to Tour school this autumn, but probably for the last time," he said. "All I'm trying to do is keep my game in shape for the Senior Tour."

O'Hara and Pinckney survived the playoff at West Lancashire, while at Southport and Ainsdale the winner was Denmark’s Morten Orum Madsen. But there was disappointment there for former European Tour star Nick Dougherty.

The Liverpudlian made only one halfway cut in losing his card last season and was still in with a good chance after an opening 70, but followed it with a 74.

A playoff was needed there as well. It involved Scotland's Chris Doak and Elliot Saltman -- the player given a three-month Tour ban at the start of last season following a ball-marking incident -- and also Hoylake professional Ian Keenan.

Saltman and Keenan took the final two qualifying spots, giving Saltman his second Open appearance in four years. He was at Turnberry with his brother Lloyd in 2009, but Lloyd missed out by five at Hillside.

O'Hara, a Walker Cup teammate of Luke Donald and Graeme McDowell in 2001, had to go to the fifth extra hole to secure an Open debut in his 11th attempt

"It's fantastic, especially to have had my dad Charlie as my caddie," he said. "It has made the day really special -- it brought back a lot of memories for me."

Hunter Mahan builds two-shot lead at AT&T National, Tiger Woods trails by five shots

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Hunter Mahan managed seven straight birdies en route to the best score of the day at sweltering Congressional.

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Doug Ferguson

Associated Press

Series: PGA Tour

BETHESDA, Md. -- Hunter Mahan ran off seven birdies for a 6-under 65 at the AT&T National in temperatures that topped 100 degrees on Friday.

It was the best score of the week at Congressional, and it gave him a two-shot lead over Robert Garrigus, Jimmy Walker and Brendon De Jonge.

Chris Couch sought medical attention and struggled to finish in the oppressive conditions. One caddie had to stop after nine holes, and another vomited to the side of the 13th green from drinking too much water.

Tiger Woods stayed in the game with a 68 in the morning, when it was still so hot that towels were used to wipe sweaty faces more than to clean clubs. He talked about the value of staying fit and strong to survive days like this. He was five shots behind.

Mahan, though, has set himself apart for two days.

"I hit a lot of good shots," said Mahan, who missed only two fairways and three greens. "I hit so many fairways and greens, I made it easy on myself. This is a pretty punishing golf course if you get off line a little bit. I put myself in some great spots to make putts. And I felt like I played well on the back, when it was getting really hot and you're getting a little bit more tired."

Mahan was at 7-under 135. His two rounds fulfilled what his swing coach, Sean Foley, said Thursday when describing his ball-striking as "a laser show."

Robert Garrigus had his sixth straight sub-par round at Congressional -- that includes last year at the U.S. Open when he became a footnote in history as only the fourth American to break par all rounds of a U.S. Open -- with a 67 and was two shots behind, along with Jimmy Walker and Brendon De Jonge, who each had a 69.

Stewart Cink, who draped a towel over his head waiting his turn to putt on the 14th green, showed signs of a resurgence with a 68 that put him in the group three shots behind, along with Vijay Singh (70), Pat Perez (69) and Rod Pampling (67).

Woods was at 2-under 140, in a tie for 11th.

More telling than only 18 players who remained under par was the cut at 148. It was one shot higher than the cut for the U.S. Open last year at Congressional, and it was the highest score to make the cut at a regular PGA Tour event since 149 at The Barclays in 2009.

Congressional was tough -- fast and firm on the course, scorching in the air -- but it was fair.

Mahan twice had to save par over the last five holes. He came up short on the 14th, but he had a couple of options. With the pin all the way to the back behind a ridge, he could run it up the slope to the hole, or even play long and have it roll back to the hole. He chose to lag it to the hole, hit it thin, and got away with the slight miss when it rolled back to 2 feet.

"I expected to hit it a little bit cleaner off the club face, but that how you shoot 65," he said. "Get good breaks like that."

He was more pleased with the 17th, which he called the one loose swing of the day. Mahan missed the green to the right, but saved par. On the 18th, he ripped a tee shot and had sand wedge into the green to 12 feet for one last birdie.

Woods was as happy about two pars as he was with his 50-foot eagle putt on the 16th hole that put him under par for the first time all week.

He was in trouble early after a few tee shots were caught in the dense rough that makes Congressional feel like a U.S. Open and forced him to hack out short of the green. Both times, he hit wedges that landed by the hole, bounced 15 feet by and caught the slope to come back within 3 feet.

"The pars at 14 and 15 were something I needed to have happen," Woods said. "I hit two good wedge shots in there after two poor drives and gave myself a couple good looks, made those, and then I rewarded all that hard work at the next hole with eagle."

Woods was three shots behind when he finished, and didn't expect to fall back much farther. The course, already looking like it was supposed to play last year for the U.S. Open, was getting firm and crusty from the scorching heat. It was the kind of day reminiscent of when Ken Venturi won the 1964 U.S. Open at Congressional, so dehydrated he almost didn't finish. And high heat was expected well into the weekend, making this a test of survival.