PHOENIX – In his first full-time season on the PGA Tour Champions circuit, Stewart Cink, a graduate of Bradshaw High School in Florence, won the tour’s season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship on Sunday at Phoenix Country Club. The win also gave him the Schwab Cup points title.
Cink finished with a 4-under 67 for a 20-under 264, two strokes ahead of Steven Alker, the third-round leader who ended up second in the season standings.
The win was the 52-year-old Cink’s third this season and fourth in 36 career starts on the 50-and-older tour. On the PGA Tour, he won eight titles, including a playoff win over Tom Watson in the 2009 British Open.
“It feels really, really good,” Cink told reporters after the tournament. “It’s something that’s very unusual, too, because normally in golf you make goals and you just cross them off that you didn’t make them. Obviously, we want to push ourselves with goals that are lofty, but on the PGA Tour Champions, this is as lofty as it gets.
“The season-long Charles Schwab Cup race is really the biggest item on the docket, so to have put it out there and to make it my goal and to talk about it often and then to accomplish it, (when) there would have been a chance to maybe like crumble out there. It feels great. I’m just so pleased. I’m proud of putting myself out at risk just as much as I am of accomplishing the goal.”
