PODS Championship round four: Victory on a plate for Calcavecchia

Most interesting thing about Sunday was the news from Orlando about Arjun Atwal’s brush with death in what reports allege was some kind of road race. Golf getting too boring for him? It was for me as Mark Calcavecchia stuttered to the winning post.

Heath Slocum’s challenge was entertaining, but didn’t seem to be going anywhere until Calcavecchia did his best to throw it away over the last three holes. Punters who had taken Calc’s price almost to the floor must have had their hearts in their mouths as Slocum stepped up to make that putt for a playoff on the 18th. How on earth did he miss? Must have been taking lessons from his old schoolchum Boo Weekley.

So no dogfight. Apart from the early doors five-under from John Senden our other challengers seemed to shut their eyes and think of the money. K J Choi was a supreme disappointment and we’ll swiftly gloss over Chris DiMarco’s attempts to knock down trees and young spectators.

Victory must be credited to Calcavecchia’s impulse-buy putter - he topped the putting ranks despite Sunday’s blip. But a look at the top performances shows how important it was to bring an accurate driver and some precise iron-play to one of the season’s toughest courses.

PS: Apologies to anyone trying to access tables on my website. They appear to have been hijacked by net pirates. I’m working on it.