Bruce Fleisher felt like a man who'd been given a free lottery ticket and then hit the jackpot.
"This is crazy, I've been away from the tour for more than seven years," Fleisher, 42, said after sinking a 40-foot birdie putt on the seventh extra hole to beat Australian Ian Baker-Finch for the championship of the $1 million New England Classic."I'm tired and hungry, and still nervous," said Fleisher, who got into the tournament at Pleasant Valley Country club as an alternate and walked away with the winner's prize of $180,000.
"I never really though about winning," Fleisher said after boosting his PGA earnings to $514,000. "It's almost sad someone had to lose, but someone had to win."
"It was a huge effort by Bruce. It was fantastic," said Baker-Finch, the 30-year-old farmer's son who has one victory and four seconds since joining the U.S. tour in late 1988.
"Something good comes out of something like this. I felt great during the playoff, but it would have been nice to hole one of those putts."
He missed putts of seven and 15 feet on the first two playoff holes.
Fleisher, who quit the PGA Tour for a country club job in 1983, sank his winning putt on the 11th green. Baker-Finch then missed from 25 feet to end the PGA's longest playoff since Bob Gilder needed eight extra holes to win at Phoenix in 1983.
Fleisher, the 1968 U.S. Amateur champion, shot a 64 on Sunday in coming back from a faltering third round. He finished 72 holes at 268, 16 strokes under par, playing four groups ahead of Baker-Finch and 1986 Pleasant Valley champion Gene Sauers.
Baker-Finch and Sauers fell one shot back with bogeys on No. 16, but the Australian forced a playoff with a birdie-4 on the 72nd hole that finished a round of 68.
The players each parred the first three extra holes, bogied the fourth, and parred the next two before Fleisher's long putt ended it.
Fleisher, who quit after 11 winless years on tour, left his club pro job last year to make another try with the pros.
Baker-Finch pocketed $108,000 for second and then headed to the airport for the flight to England for the British Open, which begins Thursday.
Sauers failed in a bid to become the first two-time winner at Pleasant Valley, which has hosted the PGA since 1965. Sauers won the 1986 title by beating Blaine McCallister in a three-hole playoff. This time, Sauers missed a playoff by a shot with a final 69 for a 72-hole score of 269.
Ted Schulz, the Los Angeles Open champion, shot a closing 67 for 272 on the 7,110-yard course.
Local Favorite Brad Faxon, Ed Dougherty, Charles Bowles and Barry Jaeckel were next at 273, one stroke ahead of John Adams and Lance Ten Broeck.
Fleisher, the first-round leader with a 64 and the halfway leader at 131, stumbled to a 73 in the rain on Saturday. Starting four strokes behind Sauers and Baker-Finch, he began his rally with an eagle-3 on the 547-yard fourth hole. He added five more birdies, the last on the 72nd hole.
And at Newport, R.I., Larry Ziegler shot a 5-under-par 67 for a six-stroke victory Sunday with a tournament-record total of 17-under 199 in the Newport Seniors Cup.
Miller Barber set the previous tournament record of 200 in 1983 when the event was called the Commemorative. George Archer , Tom Shaw and Jim Dent tied for second at 205.
Meanwhile, in Marbella, Spain, Curtis Strange holed two shots with a new sand wedge and won $220,000 in the first European Skins Game on Sunday.
Mark Calcavecchia was second with $85,000, followed by Bernhard Langer of Germany ($75,000) and John Bland of South Africa ($70,000).
Strange sank a 92-yard wedge for an eagle on the first hole of the Las Brisas course to earn $15,000. On No. 13, Strange used the same club from a fairway bunker and holed the shot to take $35,000. He hit another wedge to within a foot of the hole on No. 9, setting up a birdie that was worth $135,000.
At Lytham and St. Annes, England, Bobby Verwey of South Africa shot a 1-under-par 71 for a one-stroke victory in the Senior British Open on Sunday.
Verwey finished with a 1-over 285 total on the 6,673-yard Royal Lytham course. New Zealand's Bob Charles and England's Tommy Horton tied for second at 286.
And in Gleneagles, Scotland, Craig Parry of Australia birdied the final hole for a round of 3-under-par 67 and a one-stroke victory in the Scottish Open on Saturday. Parry finished with a 12-under 268 total on the 6,789-yard King's course. Mark McNulty of Zimbabwe finished second at 269 after a round of 66.