Greg Chalmers won the Australian PGA Championship on Sunday for his second straight major Down Under tournament victory, beating Australian countrymen Robert Allenby and Marcus Fraser with a par on the first hole of a playoff.
The left-handed Chalmers, the Australian Open winner two weeks ago at The Lakes in Sydney, will have a chance to complete the Australian Triple Crown next month in the Australian Masters in Melbourne.
Chalmers closed with a 5-under 67 to match Allenby (68) and Fraser (69) at 12-under 276 on the Hyatt Regency resort course. Australians Adam Scott (68) and Aaron Baddeley (72) followed at 10 under.
American Bubba Watson had a 77 to drop into a tie for 12th at 7 under.
Chalmers won after Allenby and Fraser ran into trouble off the tee in the playoff.
Fraser, the second-round leader, got into the playoff with a 50-foot birdie putt on the 18th in regulation, but strayed into a pond then a bunker in the playoff, while Robert Allenby drove into the rough and went on to miss a 10-foot par putt.
"I was surprised to see that a par was good enough, but that's how it goes sometime in a playoff," Chalmers said.
Third-round leader K.T. Kim, playing alongside Watson, shot a 76 to tie for sixth, three strokes behind.
Fraser got into the playoff with the huge putt on 18.
"It had beautiful speed, I saw a pretty good line," Fraser said. "I thought it sat there for about three hours. In this game, you never know, you never give up."
Scott said he "wasted a few this week."
"But I feel like the second half of this year I have been right in the mix, it's something to work on for next year. I feel like I'm knocking on the door."
American Rickie Fowler, making his professional debut in Australia after winning the world amateur title in 2008 in Adelaide, closed with a 70 and to finish at 6 under.
Greg Norman had a final-round 74 after a double-bogey 6 on the 18th when his approach went into the pond guarding the entire left side of the hole. He finished eight strokes behind.
Geoff Ogilvy shot an 80, including a 9 on the par-3 11th when he put three balls into the water.
British Open champion Darren Clarke shot 70 after teeing off at 6:35 a.m. in the second group of the day. The early start came after he shot a self-described "brutal" 79 on Saturday, leaving him near the bottom of the 66-man players who made the cut.
Coolum was the first of four consecutive weeks for Clarke, and he's traveling with the claret jug that he won at Royal St. George's in July. Clarke will play next week at the Nedback Challenge in South Africa, then play the European Tour's season-ending Dubai event and make an Asian Tour stop in Bangkok the week before Christmas.
