By ASSOCIATED PRESS
AVONDALE (AP) — Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event Sunday, April 28, beating Chad Ramey and Martin Trainer with a par on the first hole of a playoff.
Trainer pushed a 6-foot par putt to the right of the cup to end it, with Lowry and McIlroy sharing a smiling embrace on the green.
The 34-year-old McIlroy, playing in the event for the first time, won his 25th PGA Tour title and first of the season. Lowry claimed his third PGA Tour victory. The Irish tandem closed with a 4-under 68 in the alternate-shot final round to match Ramey and Trainer at 25-under 263.
Ramey and Trainer began the day tied for 27th and shot to the top of the leaderboard with nine birdies between the seventh and 18th holes. They tied the alternate-shot tournament record of 63, but then had to wait nearly three hours to see if their lead would stand up.
They struggled to execute on the playoff hole. Trainer pulled his drive into the left rough, Ramey also yanked his approach left off the cart path and into the wall below the suites around the 18th green. Trainer then chipped short before Ramey finally got onto the green.
Ryan Brehm and Mark Hubbard missed the playoff by one shot when Brehm’s birdie putt from the fringe narrowly missed to the right. Former BYU teammates Patrick Fishburn and Zach Blair, the 54-hole leaders, were tied for the lead until failing to birdie the par-5 16th and taking double bogey on the par-3 17th.
LPGA TOUR
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hannah Green closed with a 5-under 66 and won the LPGA Tour’s JM Eagle LA Championship for the second straight year, holing out twice from off the greens in a pivotal back-nine stretch at Wilshire Country Club.
A year after making a 25-foot birdie on the final hole of regulation and winning on the second hole of a playoff, Green took the drama out of this one for her fifth LPGA Tour victory and second of the year.
Green began the key run with a chip-in birdie on the par-3 12th and made a 6-foot birdie putt on the par-5 13th. Then, after Stark bogeyed the par-4 16th two groups ahead, Green ran in a 25-footer for eagle from the fringe on 15 to open a four-stroke lead, and she made it 5 under in five holes with a birdie on 16.
Stark birdied her last two holes for a 68. The 24-year-old Swede also finished second last week outside Houston in The Chevron Championship, two strokes behind top-ranked Nelly Korda in the first major of the year.
Grace Kim, four strokes ahead entering the weekend, closed 76-77 without making a birdie the last two days. She tied for 25th.
