Round 3 notes: SAS Championship

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• Weather: Players off both the first and 10th tees with lift, clean and place rules in effect. Light rain in the morning but gradual clearing from the time the round started. High temperatures in the low-80s with winds in the afternoon from the W at 5-15 mph.

• Final Leaderboard:

1. Tom Pernice, Jr. (-13)
T2. Nick Price (-12), David Frost (-12)
4. Dan Forsman (-11)
T5. Andy Bean (-10), Olin Browne (-10), Denis Watson (-10), Russ Cochran (-10)

• Pernice holed a 36-foot birdie putt on the final hole to win his first Champions Tour title in his debut on the circuit. Pernice struggled on the front nine, but made a key up and down save for a par at No. 10 after clipping a pine tree with his drive. He took the lead when Dan Forsman three-putted from 50 feet for bogey at No. 13 but a hard-charging David Frost and Nick Price eventually tied Pernice after each player birdied both the 16th and 17th holes. After a disappointing par at the par-5 No. 17, Pernice's 7-iron approach shot at No. 18 stopped 12 paces short of the hole, setting up the winning putt.

• Pernice became the 15th player in Champions Tour history to win in his debut on the circuit and the third to claim a Champions Tour event in his first start. Tom Lehman won with Bernhard Langer as his partner at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf and Michael Allen claimed the Senior PGA Championship. Before this year, the last time the Champions Tour had three players win in their debuts was in 1980 (Don January, Roberto De Vicenzo and Arnold Palmer).

• Pernice became the third player in the nine-year history of the SAS Championship to make this event his first win. Both D.A. Weibring (2003) and Mark Wiebe (2007) claimed their initial Champions Tour victories at Prestonwood and Wiebe's win also came in his first start on the circuit. Pernice became the 16th different winner on the Champions Tour this year and the sixth first-time winner on the 2009 Champions Tour joining Mike Goodes, Dan Forsman, Nick Price, Tom Lehman and Michael Allen.

• Pernice's victory today was his first title since the 2001 The International Presented by Qwest, ending a TOUR victory drought of 8 years, 1 month and 22 days or 250 TOUR events. Pernice played 264 events on the PGA TOUR before claiming his first of two career titles at the 1999 Buick Open.

• Pernice earned 315 Charles Schwab Cup points and his victory qualified him for the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, the Champions Tour's season-opening event in Hawaii in 2010.

• Each of the last five SAS Championship winners has made an eagle en route to victory but Pernice's 12 birdies were the fewest by a winner since Tom Jenkins made only 12 birdies in 2006. Pernice made only one bogey this week (No. 9/final round), the fewest by a winner in tournament history.

• Loren Roberts' final-round 66 at the SAS Championship today vaulted him up into a T9 and as a result, he earned 50 Charles Schwab Cup points. Roberts is now just seven points back of Fred Funk who finished outside the top-10 (T18) at this year's SAS Championship and did not earn any points. After 21 of the 25 official events, Funk still leads with 2,109 points and Roberts has 2,102 points. Langer, who was idle this week, remains in third place with 1,734 points. At the end of next months' Charles Schwab Cup Championship in Sonoma, CA (Oct. 29-Nov. 1), the player with the most Schwab Cup points will earn a $1 million payout. Next week's Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship, the Champions Tour's final major of the year, will feature double points for all top-10 finishers.

• Roberts' run of consecutive top-five finishes ended at five straight, but his T9 at this year's SAS Championship gives him six straight top-10s on the Champions Tour. During this run that began with a victory at the Senior British Open at Sunningdale, England, Roberts has had sub-par scores in 19 of 21 rounds.

• Frost's T2 finish at this week's SAS Championship earned him 168,000 points and as a result, he easily bumped Walter Hall for the last spot into next week's Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship. Frost, a 10-time winner on the PGA TOUR, debuted on the Champions Tour at last week's Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn and finished T9.

• Bean, Cochran and Price all finished among the top five in both stops in North Carolina on the Champions Tour. After finishing T2 at the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn, Bean followed up with a T5 at the SAS Championship, the sixth time in seven appearances he's finished among the top-20 at this event. Bean's 68 today ran his streak of par/better rounds at Prestonwood to 19 straight and 13 sub-par scores in a row. For Cochran, his T5 at the SAS Championship came after he was also T2 at the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn. After being 70th on the money list at the end of June, Cochran is now 26th in 2009 earnings ($539,236) and has put himself in position to earn a trip to the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship and fully-exempt status for the 2010 season. Price was T4 in Hickory last week and his T2 performance this week at the SAS Championship was his best effort since losing in a playoff to Mark McNulty at The Principal Charity Classic on the last day of May.

• In seven of the nine SAS Championships, a player with a first name of Tom has finished either first or second in the event. The only two years it hasn't happened were 2001 and 2007.

• With lift, clean and place rules in effect, this year's tournament scoring average was 71.280, the second lowest in tournament history. In the inaugural SAS Championship, the field averaged 71.216. Sunday's scoring average of 71.364 was a bit higher than yesterday (70.935) but lower than Round 1 (71.538) on Friday. After 45 players posted rounds below par on Friday and 53 players had sub-par rounds yesterday, there were 40 sub-par scores on Sunday.

• Keith Fergus' 7-under 65 today was the low round of the tournament and vaulted him up 29 spots into a T9, the biggest move upward by a player on Sunday. It was Fergus' first top-10 finish in a Champions Tour event since winning the rain-shortened Regions Charity Classic in mid-May.