Sports Notebook
Star-Bulletin staff
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Sabbatini shoots 62, but can’t come close
Chad Campbell obliged, but unfortunately for Rory Sabbatini, David Toms wasn't as accommodating.
The first-round leader of the Sony Open in Hawaii came out of the pack with a blistering 62 to catch Campbell for second, but not Toms, who fashioned a 65 to win by five.
The South African made things interesting for a little while with a 6-under 30 on the front side of the Waialae Country Club course, but cooled off a bit on the back to finish at 8 under for the round. Sabbatini's 14-under 266 allowed him to draw even with Campbell and cash a nice check worth $448,800.
"It was a great round of golf out there," said Sabbatini, who was paired with Bubba Watson and Charles Warren. "I had a lot of fun. I hit the ball nicely and putted great. Just kind of had everything working today, just not enough to catch David.
"You know, when I was on No. 5 and I looked back and I saw David was 2 under through four, I figured at that point that he was on today and he wasn't going to let anybody catch him. The only person who would have had a chance was Chad, and just from that point, I knew that I could only do my best, but the chances were, I wasn't going to catch him."
Had Sabbatini not shot a 2-over 72 on Friday, his chances might have been better. He lost three strokes that day to Toms, who shot a 69. Having all four rounds in the 60s allowed Toms to win his 12th PGA Tour title. Sabbatini has two wins on tour, but is still satisfied with his start to 2006.
"It's a great start to the year," Sabbatini said. "Just to be able to come out here and put some good numbers together and get a good finish out of the week. That's definitely a positive thing going into the rest of the year."
Duval goes low: David Duval began 2006 with a backbreaking 75, but finished with a 7-under 63 yesterday to earn a tie for 31st and a $30,243 paycheck. Duval shot a 30 on the front and birdied Nos. 6 through 10, before cooling off the rest of the way.
The last man to shoot 59 in a tour event didn't think about what the final number would be. In his mind, you keep playing and count it up at the end.
"Not so much thinking of a score; if anything, just try to make more and more birdies, that's all," Duval said. "I'm not one to sit there and try to hold onto a score. Just try to get as low as I can. I was forced to play some smarter shots at times.
"At 15, I sure wanted to hit it at that flag out of the rough, some other holes where I just wanted to be a little more aggressive but I couldn't. Just take what I had and be as aggressive as I could be."
It was his best score since he broke the TPC at Avenel course record with a 9-under 62 in the second round of the 2003 Booz Allen Classic. That would be 37 events and 81 rounds for those keeping score at home.
Inside the numbers: The driving accuracy percentage for the week wasn't very good and you can blame the wind on that. The best in the world found the fairways only 45 percent of the time. The lowest all last year was 47 percent at the Wachovia Championship. Last year, the players landed 54.3 percent of their drives in the fairway at the Sony.
The two easiest holes remained the two par-5s. The 18th yielded the lowest score at 4.402. There were four eagles, 43 birdies, 33 pars and two bogeys yesterday. The hardest hole remained the par-4 13th with an average of 4.390. That hole yielded only six birdies, 41 pars, 32 bogeys and three doubles.