Lehman is season points champion

• Lehman

File photo, Echo Press Tom Lehman (right), shown here with Larry Novotny during the 2009 Resorters Golf Tournament, won the Champions Tour points championship over the weekend, edging out Mark Calcavecchia by 74 points. He’s the front-runner to win the player of the year honors on the tour.

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With a 2-over-par 72, Alexandria native Tom Lehman finished in a tie for 18th in the Charles Schwab Cup Championship last weekend.

That may not seem like a big deal, but that finish gave him just enough points to stay on top of the points standings on the Champions Tour (50-and-older players), edging out Mark Calcavecchia by 74 points for the season championship. He went into the weekend with a 382-point lead.

Lehman, playing ahead of Calcavecchia, had to wait out his opponent’s finish on Sunday to learn his fate.

Calcavecchia needed to place no worse than a tie for second with one other player to be able to edge past Lehman in the standings.

But Lehman finished with 2,422 points while Calcavecchia gathered 2,348, leaving the Minnesota golfer as the Charles Schwab Cup season champion and $1 million richer.

Lehman, 52, is now in position to become the first player in history to win player of the year honors on the PGA, Nationwide (formerly Ben Hogan Tour) and the Champions tours. His peers will vote on the honor.

Lehman won the Nationwide player of the year honors in 1991, then added his second title in 1996 on the PGA Tour.

He was a three-time winner this season, jumping into the points lead with a win at the Allianz Championship in February and never trailing since.

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