Loren Roberts brings an end to his winless streak with a win at Toshiba Classic on Champions Tour
Loren Roberts proved the critics wrong yet again when he landed the Toshiba Classic on the Champions Tour on Sunday, March 18, after a lapse a painstaking two years.
56-year-old Roberts had actually started thinking that his time is done and he will never be able to land any more titles on the Champions Tour.
His majestic performance on the final day of the event, at the scenic Newport Beach and Country Club, California where he carded a round of two-under, 69 to lift the trophy, cleared all doubts.
Roberts said, "We did make it interesting, I got off to a really good start”.
It really was an interesting start indeed as the veteran rolled in three birdies on the opening four holes to clinch lead at the start of the day. He fell for a bogey on par-four, 7th and made the turn to card two more on the back nine.
He stumbled on consecutive bogeys to lose his grasp on the game. He closed his round with a stunning birdie putt on the 18th to finally claim the returns.
Robert said of the 16th where he fell for a bogey, "So I'm thinking this putt, I'm just going to ease it down there. It's got to go left?to?right. You know, I just lipped it out on the left side. I probably gave it too much break”.
Three players finished for a joint second, all three, one of the biggest names the sport has ever known.
German former world number one Bernhard Langer, Mark Calcavecchia, and Tom Kite all finished two strokes behind Roberts.
Langer who started off his bid with a glorious 65 on the opening day, did not play equally well on the final day.
Langer said, "I was struggling with the putter last year to be honest with you. I made a big change last week at home when I was messing around with it and looked at some old films, and I saw that my shaft position at impact, before when I was putting good,
I had a little bit more shaft lean”.
Roberts walked away with the winner’s prize share of $262,500 out of the total purse of $1.75 million. He is now ranked 60th in Putting Average on the Champions Tour and a joint 20th on Greens in Regulation.
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