By mustang6560 on 10/17/11

I turned on The Golf Channel yesterday to watch the final round coverage of the McGladrey Classic and was genuinely surprised to see Ben Crane's name near the top of the leaderboard. I remember thinking to myself, "Huh, it's been awhile since we've seen Ben's name near the top of the leaderboard - good for him."

It never once crossed my mind that Ben actually had a chance to win because Webb Simpson was supposed to win to take the money list title from Luke Donald. So you can imagine my surprise when I went online last night and saw Ben's smiling face holding the the silver trophy on pgatour.com.

Ben was six strokes back at the turn, but he managed to force a playoff with Webb after carding a 30 on the back nine.

"Is that right?" Crane asked after counting up his eight birdies following the round. "What the heck? Wow. That's as good as I can play."

The four-time PGA TOUR winner didn't even look at a leaderboard until he was on No. 16, with six birdies already on his card. You'd forgive him if he was a little distracted. After all, he and his wife Heather are expecting their third child on Monday.

Ben admitted he was five minutes away from not even playing in the tournament because his wife and family were back in Dallas preparing for the birth of their third child so winning the McGladrey even surprised him.

"I'm having a baby, and I do not know the answer," Crane said. "My wife and I were kind of going over some names last night, and there was a few little change-ups. I'm like, 'yeah, I like that.' So we've got some different stuff going on. But then I was driving, bringing the car down after the playoff was over, and someone said, 'Well, you've got to name the baby -- the baby's middle name has got to be McGladrey or Frederica ... Sea Island.'"

Don't get crazy with the names, Ben. Keep it classy and go with something like ... say ... Nathan. Yea, that sounds like a solid name.

All is not lost for Webb, though. Sure, he did suffer his second playoff loss of the season, but he did manage to put a few hundred thousand dollars between him and Luke in the PGA Tour money list standings. Webb started the McGladrey Classic nearly $70k behind Luke, but his third runner finish this season earned him $423k so he now has a $363k lead over the Englishmen heading into the final event of the season. Nothing is a sure thing in golf, but I like Webb's chances of winning the money title.



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photo by Brian J. McDermott