Ugly or Not, It’s a Major LPGA Win for Johnson

Chris Johnson’s victory in a playoff in the LPGA Championship wasn’t anything you would want to hang in an art gallery.

“It wasn’t very pretty,” she said.

The $180,000 check she earned Sunday for winning a major tournament for the first time was downright gorgeous, though, and helped erase the ugliness:

--Of a blown putt on the 72nd hole that put her into a playoff with Leta Lindley at three-under-par 281;

--Of both golfers bogeying the first playoff hole;

--Of Johnson missing the green on the second playoff hole and winning, in part because Lindley missed the whole fairway;

--And even of Annika Sorenstam’s missing a two-foot putt on her 72nd hole that would have made it a three-way playoff.

“I think I know what this means more than some of the other players out here,” Johnson said. “My career started over [with lessons] five years ago. . . . It’s been coming, and it all came together this week.”

The finishing touch was her eight-foot par putt on the second playoff hole after she had hit her second shot eight feet over the green. But Lindley’s tee shot soared into the trees to the right of the fairway.

It was only the third playoff in the LPGA Championship since the tournament began in 1955, and the first since 1970.

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Bruce Crampton, 61, became only the sixth player over 60 to win a Senior PGA Tour event when he birdied the third playoff hole to beat Hugh Baiocchi in the Cadillac Senior Golf Classic at Clifton, N.J.

It was Crampton’s first Senior PGA Tour victory in five years. He also ended the tour’s longest stretch between tournament wins: 5 years, 2 months and 10 days.

Crampton and Baiocchi had finished 54 holes at six-under-par 210, and both parred the first two playoff holes.

On the third, the par-five 18th, Crampton hit his third shot eight feet from the pin. After Baiocchi missed a 20-foot putt for a birdie, Crampton calmly holed his putt.