BY STEPHEN FASTENAU
Mike "Fluff" Cowan busied himself removing the flag at the 17th hole for Jim Furyk, one of the final acts in a long day. "It's been a long time coming," Furyk's longtime caddie said. Furyk knew exactly how long since his most recent victory. Four and a half years, he said in the media tent while wearing the tartan jacket, getting ahead of a question he has heard many times. Furyk ended a frustrating drought with an 8-under-par 63 Sunday at Harbour Town Golf Links and won the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing with a birdie on the second playoff hole to beat Aiken native Kevin Kisner. The final round was the lowest by a champion here, and Furyk birdied both playoff holes.He didn't back into victory. He took it.
After the 12-foot putt on the par-3 17th dropped, he dropped his putter and pumped his arms. A little released frustration, he said. "I've had too many close calls and been in position too many times for me to believe that it wouldn't happen," said Furyk, who earned $1.062 million and finished 72 holes tied with Kisner at 18-under 266. Weather altered the final round, with groups of three going off starting at 7:30 a.m. The playoff ended well ahead of afternoon thunderstorms. Furyk won for the first time since the 2010 Tour Championship. He won three times that year, including the RBC Heritage, and was player of the year. But he had not been able to break through again until Sunday, when he became the 10th player to win multiple Heritage titles.
During the tough stretch, he responded to questions with some perspective, that he still has it pretty good on the back end of a career that has netted him more than $60 million on the course. He admitted Sunday there was more frustration than he showed the past four years. "I always did feel like I was going to win a tournament again," Furyk said. "And I believed that in my heart. But I was starting to feel like the game is beating me up, and the losing hurts a lot more than winning feels good."
Playing with Masters champion Jordan Spieth, Furyk rode the energy of the group and a hot putter. His 48-foot birdie putt on No. 8 was part of four consecutive birdies that gave him the lead after he started four behind Troy Merritt. "His putting this week made my putting last week look like something that wasn't very good," Spieth said of Furyk. "Confident strokes right in the middle." Winners have come back to win the past three tournaments -- Graeme McDowell winning in a 2013 playoff, Matt Kuchar holing a bunker shot on the final hole last year and Furyk with a birdie Sunday on the 74th hole, the par-3 17th.
Furyk and Kisner matched birdies on No. 18, the first playoff hole, after Kisner birdied the hole to enter the playoff. While waiting for Kisner to finish, Furyk reluctantly signed an autograph and then swung an iron by the CBS television tower while looking out at the Calibogue Sound. He stuck both his approach shots close during the playoff, helped by an adjustment in his posture he made on the back nine. Kisner, from Aiken, was trying to become the first South Carolina native to win at Harbour Town. He made a 17-foot birdie on the first playoff hole, but his attempt from more than 20 feet on No. 17 slid past. "I hit every shot just like I wanted to coming down the stretch, and that's all you could ever ask for," he said.
Furyk was worried the weather was going to delay his arrival at his foundation's annual charity event. With the tartan jacket on early Sunday afternoon, the round getting in without delay, he said he looked forward to arriving in style. "It would still be fun, but it would be a hell of a lot more fun to show up tonight with this jacket on," Furyk said.
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