KA'UPULEHU, Hawai'i — From the moment Hale Irwin bagged his first birdie yesterday, on the first hole of the final round of the MasterCard Championship at Hualalai, it was not a matter of how he would win, but by how much.

Irwin's winning margin was ultimately five over Jim Thorpe and Tom Kite in the first Champions Tour event of the year. He went into the final round with a three-shot advantage and blew everybody off the course a second straight day to grab $290,000 and his first victory in 15 months.

After going winless for the first time in his spectacular senior career last year, Irwin, 61, thrived in the dominance of his 45th Champions victory. He opened with a 6-under-par 66, shot 62 on Saturday to surge ahead — missing a birdie putt on the final hole that would have allowed him to shoot his age — and closed with 65 to become the sixth-oldest to win on this tour.

"What I had hoped to accomplish," Irwin said, "I accomplished in a big way this week."

Being blanked in 2006, and falling out of the top 10 for the first time since he turned 50, got Irwin thinking. After easing up on his conditioning last year to try and ease the stress on his chronically bad back, he worked out with a vengeance this offseason. After dropping from the top echelon of the putting statistics to 39th, he made major changes to try and bring his shoulders back into the stroke. He changed his driver and 6-iron.

Then he tried to put last year out of his head.

"There is still life in my golf game, witness this week," Irwin said. "There's still fire in my belly to do that and maybe that's more important than anything else. Rather than saying, 'Well gosh, I'm closer to 62 than 61, I better start slowing down,' I don't accept that. I'm still trying to learn."

Guys buried birdies all over defenseless Hualalai Golf Club all week, going so low that any round starting with "7" sent you straight out of contention. Still, it wasn't nearly enough to catch Irwin, a man on a mission to regain the game that helped him dominate this tour his first 11 years — and a guy who did not miss a putt within 10 feet yesterday until the final green.

That it came in Hawai'i, his "home away from home," made perfect sense. Irwin has now won 12 times here — going back to his Hawaiian Open championship in 1981 — and more than $4 million. He represented Kapalua for years and now plays out of Hokuli'a down the highway.

About all he missed yesterday was the 25-under-par scoring record Loren Roberts set last year. Irwin had a 24-footer for birdie on the 18th to tie it. He missed that, and the kick-in for par that followed — "That was definitely a hiccup" — to finish at 23-under 193.

"You can't win when somebody has 15 one-putts," said Kite, who played with Irwin. "I'd actually already given him that putt on the 18th. ... He was magical on the greens."

Irwin didn't know where he stood until he asked his wife, Sally, on the final fairway. His mind-set at Hualalai yesterday was simply to "make birdies or they will all pass you."

No one could get hot enough to bother him. He birdied three of his first four, made the turn in 32 — with 11 putts — and coasted home. "The start was important for two reasons," Irwin said. "It was good for me and demoralizing for the other guys."

Kite agreed absolutely.

"Starting out with a three-shot lead we needed to put a little pressure on him," he said. "I wasn't as sharp today as I was the first two days, especially on the front nine. I needed to put some heat on and I didn't do it so he built up a nice cushion there. ... And he made a ton of putts."

Thorpe (66) and Roberts (67) were the only ones to get back to a three-shot deficit after No. 1. Roberts climbed to 18-under with eagle-birdie after making the turn, but played the final seven holes in 1-over. Thorpe eagled the third hole, launching a ball into the hole on the fly from the fairway, to pull three back. A birdie on the 13th brought him three back again, but Irwin refused to let anyone closer.

"Hale was determined we just weren't going to beat him," Thorpe said.

After coming close to driving into the lava on the 13th, Irwin dropped the hammer with birdies at the 14th and 15th and twisted the knife with another at the 17th. He had 25 birdies for the week and played the par-5s in 11-under par. He finished first in the field in putting (25 per round) and fairways hit (88 percent) and now has 13 consecutive rounds in the 60s at Hualalai.

Last year was forgotten, in a blur of birdies and brilliance. Irwin drew a parallel between the three winless years after he won The Memorial in 1985 on the regular tour.

"I really didn't play very good golf," Irwin recalled. "Not that I couldn't play. I was hitting the shots, I just wasn't putting any scores up. Last year it wasn't that I wasn't hitting the shots. I was just wasting shots, silly things, putting problems which is concentration. I just wasn't focusing. Perhaps it's an attitude change. You re-examine everything over the winter and kind of step back and think about your problems.

"I was just trying so many things last year it was confusing. You'd think after all these years I wouldn't do that and I did."

NOTES

The Champions Tour flies to O'ahu's North Shore this week for the Turtle Bay Championship, the first full-field event of the year. Loren Roberts eagled the last hole at Turtle Bay's Palmer Course last year to beat Scott Simpson by two shots.

It was the first time someone other than Hale Irwin won at Turtle Bay since the tour moved there in 2000.

Hawai'i's David Ishii will play at Turtle Bay, where he finished 29th last year.

Bob Gilder went out first, by himself, yesterday and finished in 2 hours, 9 minutes, shooting a 66. ... The Wadkins brothers — Bobby (76-216) and Lanny (76-219) were the only golfers not to break par for the tournament. The course played to an average of 68.715 over the three days. ... Jay Haas, the 2006 senior Player of the Year, fired 66 yesterday to bolt into fifth place behind Roberts. Haas shared fifth with first-round leader Brad Bryant. ... Jim Thorpe shot 37 on the front nine Friday, then played the final 45 holes in 19-under. ... Gary Player, who bettered his age in the first two rounds with 69s, shot 73 yesterday — two higher than his age. ... Dana Quigley's 70 on Saturday ended his streak of rounds in the 60s at MasterCard at 15. Quigley closed with a 73.

Pat Laverty, 55, of Las Vegas, shot a 4-under-par 68 yesterday at the Turtle Bay Resort's George Fazio Course to secure one of the five spots for today's event qualifier for the 2007 Turtle Bay Championship. Honolulu's Stan Souza, 51, shot a 3-under 69 with Frank Apodaca, 52, of San Jose, Calif., and Doug Johnson, 56, of Weirsdale, Fla. Joe Clark Jr., of Holderness, N.H., earned the final spot on the eighth hole of a five-way playoff. The top nine from today's qualifier will earn spots into the Turtle Bay Championship.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.