Appleby joins sub-60 club and Langer wins two in a row

US TOUR NEWS:WHAT'S GOING on? For years, breaking the sound barrier – as players on tour refer to a sub-60 round – has been as near to impossible as any feat for a tour player. On Sunday last, a month after Paul Goydos accomplished the deed, Australian Stuart Appleby became just the fifth member of the exclusive "59" club on the US Tour when he shot the magical figure in winning the Greenbrier Classic.

What’s more, Appleby’s achievement came on the same day as another accomplishment of equal merit when Germany’s Bernhard Langer, a week on from his success in the Senior British Open, overcame jet-lag and crossing eight time zones to get to the west coast of the United States by claiming the US Seniors Open championship.

It gave Langer back-to-back majors on the Champions Tour, achieved by winning on two tough courses, Carnoustie and then Sahalee. That he fended off no less a figure than Fred Couples, the home town hero, to win in Sahalee only served to add further merit to Langer’s accomplishment.

First, to Appleby, a player who had seemed but a pale shadow of his former self in recent seasons. Last year, he finished 137th on the US Tour money list and was forced to use his one-time exemption for being in the top-25 on the career money list to retain a card.

Up until Sunday, this season had seemed set to be another mundane one until he arrived in the mountains of West Virginia for the Greenbrier Classic.

In what was his 11th successive tournament on the road, Appleby went into the final round trailing Jeff Overton by seven shots, but proceeded to claim his first tour win since the 2006 Shell Houston Open by firing a 59 to Overton’s 67.

Appleby’s round came less than a month after Goydos shot his 59 at the John Deere Classic. The others to shoot 59 on the US Tour are Al Geiberger (1977 Memphis Classic), Chip Beck (1991 Las Vegas Invitational) and David Duval (1999 Bob Hope Classic).

Appleby had nine birdies and an eagle in his final round, including three from inside 15-feet on the final three holes, to earn the $1.08 million winner’s cheque and secure a place in the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron as a result.

This was a round that seemingly came from nowhere, as the Aussie had managed just two top-10 finishes in a season which had also featured 11 missed cuts. He had played 80 rounds this year entering the Greenbrier Classic and only shot in the 60s on 21 occasions.

“It’s really changed my season. It’s given some real valid weight to the time you spend on the range frustrated, and it’s been plenty of those. Every player that’s on, you know, golf, but certainly on the tour, has that (feeling) . . . . I really want to get back to the player that I was.”

Appleby was asked what it meant to end a four-year winless drought on tour. The 39-year-old had gone 110 tournaments since that victory in the Houston Open and had racked up 358 rounds since he last shot 64 or lower, never mind threaten a sub-60.

“Four years is not such a short period of time by any means. I’m not getting any younger and the years seem to just fly by. I would love to be a yearly holder of a trophy for sure. There’s a couple of hundred guys thinking like that too, so it’s not easy. But four years? I should be getting older and wilier and more experienced, and that’s maybe how I’ll use some of that time-line through those four years, to make sure I don’t ever have a break (from winning) like this again.”

Older. Wilier. More experienced. Such words adequately sum up Langer’s longevity in the sport, and his back-to-back Seniors’ wins – following up his British Seniors with the US version – marked another impressive addition to his career CV, as he shot a bogey-free 67 final round to edge out Couples.

Thrown into an environment closer to that of a Ryder Cup’s partisan nature, Langer kept to the task and retained his focus as the home galleries urged on their favourite, Couples, who had grown up less than 20 miles from the course.

“It’s never much fun, but I’ve had it before,” said Langer.

“When you play in the same group with Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer or any of the other big names in America, certainly the Ryder Cups, you get a lot more of this. So I knew what was coming, which doesn’t make it any easier. They were definitely against me and for Freddy.”

Langer, who became the first player on the Seniors circuit to win back-to-back Majors since Tom Watson in 2003, added: “It’s hard to believe I won two with an eight-hour time change in between and two very challenging courses. I probably played some of my best golf these last two weeks.”

US SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

Sahalee CC, Seattle, Washington

(USA unless stated, par 70):

Selected scores

272 – Bernhard Langer (Ger) 69 68 68 67 .

275 – Fred Couples 70 70 65 70.

278 – John Cook 71 68 72 67, Olin Browne 73 70 70 65.

281 – Tom Watson 70 70 75 66.

282 – Michael Allen 69 71 71 71, Peter Senior (Aus) 73 70 68 71.

283 – Tom Kite 72 69 69 73, Chien-Soon Lu (Tpe) 71 71 68 73, Larry Mize 74 69 72 68.

284 – Tommy Armour III 71 68 72 73.

285 – Dan Forsman 78 71 69 67, Scott Simpson 70 71 71 73, John Morse 72 74 68 71, Tom Lehman 69 75 72 69, J.L. Lewis 72 70 73 70.

286 – JR Roth 73 66 75 72 287 Joey Sindelar 74 71 74 68, Mark Wiebe 73 72 72 70.

GREENBRIER CLASSIC,

The Old White Course, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

(USA unless stated, par 70):

Selected scores

258 – Stuart Appleby (Aus) 66 68 65 59.

259 – Jeff Overton 64 62 66 67.

263 – Brendon De Jonge 65 68 65 65.

265 – DA Points 68 66 61 70, Paul Stankowski 69 65 67 64, Jimmy Walker 67 64 67 67, Woody Austin 67 68 67 63, Roger Tambellini 69 66 65 65.

266 – Aron Price (Aus) 65 71 65 65, Chris Stroud 69 63 69 65, Pat Perez 64 69 69 64, Jim Furyk 68 65 67 66, Boo Weekley 67 63 67 69, Troy Matteson 69 65 67 65, Charles Howell III 65 67 67 67.

267 – JB Holmes 69 69 60 69, Marc Leishman (Aus) 68 68 65 66, Scott Piercy 66 67 67 67, Brandt Snedeker

68 68 65 66, Matt Bettencourt 65 69 67 66.