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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, January 29, 2007

Ishii tied for 13th after strong finish

By Bill Kwon
Special to The Advertiser

KAHUKU — It wasn't a top-10 finish, but David Ishii will take it.

He wound up a stroke shy of making it by shooting a final-round 69 for a 54-hole total of 207 for a 10-way tie for 13th place in the Turtle Bay Championship.

Ishii finished 14 strokes behind runaway winner Fred Funk. But, then, everyone else was light years away from Funk when it was all over at the benign Palmer Course Sunday.

In winning the first full-field event of the year on the Champions Tour, Funk did it in record-breaking fashion. He set the record for the biggest margin of victory (11 strokes) in a 54-hole event and broke the tournament record for the event dating back to its beginning as the Ka'anapali Classic with a 23-under-par 193.

While Funk was lapping the field, Ishii felt a lot better about himself than he did Saturday even though he shot just one stroke lower.

Finishing with a birdie on the last hole can do that.

"I hit the ball better than yesterday. That was what I wanted to do," said Ishii, who played the event for the second year in a row on a sponsor's exemption. "But I could have made a couple more putts."

One Ishii wished he had made was at the sixth hole where he missed a six-footer for birdie.

Despite hitting only five greens in regulation on the front nine, Ishii scrambled with some great par saves and birdied the par-3 eighth to make the turn at 1 under with only 13 putts.

He bogeyed the par-4 10th for the second day in a row, this time pulling instead of pushing his tee shot.

"I made sure I wasn't going right today. But I came back with a couple of birdies, so that was good," said Ishii, who had a two-putt birdie at 12 and sank a 15-footer at 14 to go 8 under.

At 18, Ishii came to within a foot from a top-10 finish as his 57-foot eagle try downhill from the back fringe just missed. That would have put him 10 under. "That was a nice putt," Ishii said.

Instead, he tapped in for his birdie for a much better finish than the disappointing par on Saturday when he was uncomfortable with his tee shots and couldn't go for the green in two.

"I played better coming in so I was happy about that. I felt uncomfortable on the back nine yesterday. Today was a little better," said Ishii, who earned $25,008.