Lehman captures Sr. PGA

Tom Lehman won the 71st Senior PGA Championship at Parker, Colo., on Sunday with a par on the first playoff hole, where Fred Couples and David Frost were done in by bad tee shots and double-bogeyed.

After Lehman began the sudden death playoff on No. 18 with a solid shot down the fairway, Couples’ only bad tee shot of the tournament veered left into the shrubs, forcing him to take a drop.

Frost’s tee shot ended up in the left bunker and he pulled his second shot left of the gallery. He cleared out dozens of pine cones in between him and the green before striking his ball, which was nestled in a shrub.

Frost and Couples finished with 6s before Lehman’s birdie putt from 12 feet came up a quarter roll short. He smiled, tapped it from there, pumped his right fist and cradled the silver trophy.

Lehman’s first individual Champions Tour triumph – he teamed with Bernhard Langer to win the 2009 Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf – was worth $360,000.

Since turning the requisite 50 years old in October, Couples has energized the Champions Tour, winning half of the six events he entered before coming to Colorado, where the thin air favored his strong drives – but not in sudden death.

PGA Tour

Zach Johnson shot a closing 6-under 64 in the final round of the Colonial at Fort Worth, Texas, winning at Hogan’s Alley with a tournament-record score of 21-under 259.

The 2007 Masters champion finished three strokes ahead of Brian Davis, who had a closing 68.

Jeff Overton and Ben Crane both shot 67 to finish tied for third at 17 under. Scott Verplank (65) and Bryce Molder (70), who led after the second and third rounds, were another shot back.

It is the seventh PGA Tour victory for Johnson and first since winning in San Antonio last May. His best finish through 12 tournaments this season had been a tie for 12th at the Sony Open in Hawaii the second week of the season.

Along with the plaid jacket given to the winner, Johnson gets a check for $1.116 million.

Spokane’s Alex Prugh shot 73 on Sunday and finished the tournament at 2 under par.

LPGA

Meaghan Francella won the LPGA Brasil Cup by defeating Mariajo Uribe in a six-hole, sudden-death playoff at Rio de Janeiro.

Francella made a 10-foot birdie putt on the sixth extra hole, the par-3 17th, to earn the $105,000 first-place check.