PGA TOUR Woods wins at Doral with help from Toms
Tiger finished bogey-bogey and still won by one shot.
MIAMI (AP) -- Tiger Woods knew he had to keep making birdies to stay ahead of the pack, and he delivered the kind of shots that make him so difficult to beat.
Everything changed on the 18th hole Sunday in the Ford Championship.
All he needed was a bogey.
He did that, too.
With a one-shot lead, his ball in the rough and a 9-iron in his hand, Woods watched from 170 yards away as David Toms ran his 60-foot putt to the bottom of the green, then missed the next one to fall two shots behind.
"I just said, 'Anything in the back bleachers, right bleachers, just anything over there to the right and over the water was all I had to do," Woods said. "I was just trying to play for 5. I wasn't even trying to make par."
13th successful defense
Despite a bogey-bogey finish on the Blue Monster, Woods closed with a 3-under 69 for a one-shot victory over Toms and Colombian rookie Camilo Villegas. It was the 13th time he has successfully defended a title on the PGA Tour, and he became the first player in 25 years to win back-to-back at Doral.
On 18, he hit a 9-iron so far to the right that it wound up in a bunker, nearly 100 feet from the hole, slightly against the back lip. The ball sat up on a rake mark, making the shot slightly easier, and Woods blasted out to 12 feet.
Woods finished at 20-under 268 and earned $990,000.
Best closer in golf
It was his 48th career victory, and it enhanced his reputation as the best closer in golf. Woods now is 34-3 when he has at least a share of the 54-hole lead on the PGA Tour, and he has never lost in 20 tries when leading by at least two going into the last round.
Toms and Villegas each shot 67 to finish at 269, and they left in a different frame of mind.
Villegas was a darling before this largely Latino gallery in south Florida, and while he challenged Woods briefly on the front nine, his two birdies over the final five holes pushed him up the leaderboard. He was three shots behind playing the 18th, and realized there was little hope of catching Woods.
"We are talking here about the best player in the world," Villegas said. "I played well. I had fun."
Toms made back-to-back birdies to start the back nine and pulled within one shot, then added another birdie on the 16th to get within two shots of the lead. He never looked at a leaderboard, and only figured he was in range by the energy from the gallery on another tropical day at the Blue Monster.
All changed at 18th
But that changed on the 18th, which always has been a tough hole for him. He had a decent lie in the rough, but couldn't go after the flag with a 4-iron, so he played smartly to the fat part of the green. An NBC analyst told him that Woods had bogeyed the 17th, and the lead was down to one shot.
"I wasn't even nervous all day because I'm trying to catch the guy," Toms said. "All of a sudden, I've got a putt all the way across the green, big break, and I'm nervous because I'm just trying to two-putt. That's my mistake. But if I had been looking at it all day, then maybe I would have felt that way all the way through the back nine."
Toms didn't beat himself up over a bogey on the 18th, one of the toughest closing holes on the PGA Tour that played to an average of 4.5 shots in the final round.
He was more frustrated with a 70 in the third round, which left him three shots behind Woods.
"When you play against Tiger, you can't slip up," Toms said. "You just have to play solid every day."
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