PGA TOUR Stadler gets second victory in eight days at B.C. Open

Just last week he captured his first Champions Tour win.
ENDICOTT, N.Y. (AP) -- Craig Stadler scowled his familiar scowl, but for a change it wasn't because of a bad golf shot. Something rare had happened, and he was trying to figure it out.
"It's like la-la land here," Stadler said Sunday after coming from eight strokes behind to win the B.C. Open. "As bad as I played on the West Coast in the spring, I'm playing that good now, and I have no idea what rhyme or reason there is to it."
And Stadler had played badly: Nine PGA Tour events, five missed cuts, one withdrawal.
He was pretty much hating everything about golf.
Not any more. Not after his 13th PGA Tour victory. The grizzled PGA Tour veteran, now a full-fledged member of the senior tour at 50, has won two tournaments in eight days.
Last week, he shot a final-round 66 to win the Senior Players Championship by three strokes.
Shoots 63 in final round
On Sunday, he shot a stunning 9-under 63 to beat Steve Lowery and Alex Cejka by one stroke.
"It's fun," said Stadler, who became the first member of the senior tour -- and the fifth-oldest player -- to win a PGA Tour event. "Golf was so miserable six months ago, and now it's just fun."
Ray Floyd also won on both tours in 1992, but he was 49 and still on the PGA Tour when he captured Doral.
Stadler's comeback is the best on the PGA Tour this year and the best in B.C. Open history. He finished at 21-under 267 and pocketed the winner's check of $540,000, the largest of his 26-year career.
The five-year slump Stadler had endured on the greens vanished on the En-Joie Golf Club course under ideal scoring conditions. He went 6 under on the front nine to move into contention, starting the day with a 29-foot birdie putt at No. 1.
After tap-in birdies at Nos. 3 and 5 dropped him to 16 under, he elicited a huge roar from the gallery with a 48-foot birdie putt at No. 7.
And he wasn't finished. He chipped in from 17 feet on No. 9 after his drive went awry and flew over a cart path along the right side of the fairway, then rolled in a 38-foot putt for an eagle-3 at the 12th hole to tie Lowery for the lead.
"I didn't even consider coming back from eight shots," said Stadler, whose son Chris, a linebacker in college, caddied for the first time. "I just wanted to go out and make some birdies early and shoot a good round.
"But once the putt went in on 12, there was a little different mind-set. I thought I might have a chance."
Long slump over
Stadler was playing like the man who won the 1982 Masters and finished as the tour's leading money-winner. Not the one who had just two top 10s and made the cut only 19 times in 41 starts the previous two years.
Stadler's scintillating performance spoiled what had been a marvelous weekend for Lowery, who entered the day with a five-shot lead over Cejka and rookie John E. Morgan of England.
But after carding a pair of 64s and a 68, Lowery had an even-par 72 to finish at 268. Morgan shot a 70 and finished in a six-way tie for fifth.
Although Stadler actually clinched the victory with a birdie at 18, he expected a playoff was looming with Cejka, who had drained a 13-foot birdie putt at No. 16 to tie for the lead.
Cejka parred the short 17th hole. Then, just as he did Saturday, he plunked his tee shot at No. 18 into an imposing fairway water hazard and had to settle for bogey when his putt for par stopped less than an inch from the hole.
"I just turned it a little bit too much, and it just caught the edge," Cejka said of his errant drive. "The putt was good. I thought I had it. It just broke in the end too much."
Instead of a tense sudden-death playoff, Stadler had his first tour victory in seven years as he heads to Scotland for the Senior British Open this week.