KAPALUA, Maui — If every golf tournament in 2008 goes as long as the first, there might be no offseason.

Daniel Chopra and Steve Stricker played better than anyone in the Mercedes-Benz Championship — and pretty much every golfer in the winners-only field played great yesterday — to advance from a haze of birdies and eagles into a playoff at 18-under-par 274.

Chopra finally won it with birdie on the fourth extra hole as a golden sunset swallowed Kapalua's Plantation Course. It was the fourth playoff since the tournament moved to Maui in 1999 and longest in the 55-year history of the event.

Chopra, No. 130 in the World Golf Rankings, had never played here before. He prepared by visualizing the vast course while watching previous Mercedes on TV and, the 34-year-old readily admitted, playing Plantation "on PlayStation a bunch, too."

Virtual golf was nothing like the real thing yesterday. Chopra charged to three straight birdies and a three-shot advantage with five holes remaining, then watched Stricker relentlessly erase it with birdies on three of the final four holes.

"I birdied 13 and thought 'Wow, I'm going to run away with this thing,' " Chopra recalled. "I look up on the board and I'm only ahead by one. I'm going, 'What the hell do you have to do?' This is the final round, it's supposed to be pressure-packed, and it's hard to put a win away. I'm 7-under for the day, two ahead of Stricker for the day, and he's right there behind me. Then he birdies 18 and all of a sudden now I've got to birdie 18 just to win."

Stricker, voted Comeback Player of the Year the last two seasons, closed with an 8-under-par 64 highlighted by a blind flop-shot eagle from about 50 yards out on the 12th. But when it came to the playoff, that brilliance eluded him.

"It was no Tiger Woods and Ernie Els playoff, I can tell you that," Stricker said in reference to the memorable Mercedes close staged in the sunset here in 2000. "We were kind of throwing jabs, feeling each other out and seeing who was going to make the first mistake."

It might not have had all the late eagles and birdies, or even the name recognition despite Stricker's No. 5 ranking, but it hardly lacked the drama and bizarre detail.

On the first extra hole (par-5 18th), Chopra reached the green in two shots, but was 85 feet from the hole. Stricker was about 40 feet behind him and his chip shot landed on Chopra's ball marker and skidded to a stop 10 feet short.

"I looked at it (the marker) and I'm like, that's my area where I need to go, but I thought what are the odds of me hitting that," Stricker said. "It was a rather large ball mark. It wasn't a coin. In hindsight, I should have had him mark with a penny ... something else smaller. It was pretty tall. That's my fault, just not having him re-mark it. It took a lot of the speed off."

Chopra's massive putt to win stopped 7 feet short and both missed their birdie opportunities. They went to the first hole and Chopra's 24-foot birdie putt for the win hung on the lip while he fell to his knees and watched in anguish.

Stricker seized the advantage on the third playoff hole (218-yard par-3 No. 2) when he hit his tee shot 16 feet behind the hole. After Chopra, blinded by the setting sun, missed his birdie putt from 19 feet, Stricker was just short on what would be his only putt to win.

They cut over to No. 9 (521-yard par-5) and Chopra hit the green in two again. Stricker pulled his second and knocked his third 23 feet by the hole.

Chopra agonizingly left his eagle putt on the lip again — "half the ball was hanging over the hole" — but Stricker missed.

Chopra, who played more than 130 PGA Tour events before getting his first win, now has his second in three starts. He broke into tears as he hugged his wife and nearly lost it again on TV, answering almost every question with "unbelievable." The man born in Sweden and raised in India, who has played golf in 40 countries, had absolutely arrived on a course he adores.

"I guess the (first) win made me more comfortable. I felt very comfortable out there," Chopra said. "The golf course was designed by me, I'm guessing. There's not a golf course out there that suits me more. I just loved it from the moment I saw it."

Not that it was easy, with golfers beating up on the Plantation with more relish everyday as the weather got better and the rust of the offseason wore off. Chopra was shocked he was two shots off Mike Weir's lead after playing so well Saturday. When he birdied Nos. 11, 12 and 13 yesterday and still couldn't pull away he was incredulous.

He would finish with a bogey-free 66, and barely miss a 13-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole that would have won it in regulation.

Stricker, whose win at The Barclays last year was his fourth overall but first since 2001, called this one "bittersweet." He was even-par after No. 13 Friday and played his final 41 holes in 18-under, going bogey-free the final 38, counting the playoff. All it got him was second, and $630,000 — $380,000 less than Chopra but $555,000 more than last-place Joe Ogilvie, one of just two players over par.

The other was Paul Goydos, who will defend his title this week at the Sony Open in Hawai'i. Chopra and Stricker, fourth at Sony last year, will also be there.

"I played a great round and ended up with some opportunities in regulation to make a couple more birdies down the stretch," Stricker said. "I hit good putts. I can't be disappointed. It was a great start to the year. I mean, I can be a little disappointed, I guess, because I didn't win."

The final afternoon of the first PGA Tour event of 2008 was a fascinating few hours filled with birdies and eagles. After weeks of sketchy weather, Kapalua was again transformed into a postcard. The idyllic conditions, enhanced by soft greens, created a final round that forced the 31 winners from last year to go low just to stay close.

Third-round leader Mike Weir discovered that early. He hit his first tee shot into the weeds, bogeyed the first and fourth holes and couldn't climb into contention again despite playing the last 10 holes in 5-under. He finished fourth.

Hunter Mahan also discovered just how good these guys are on a day when the Plantation lost pretty much all its weather-related punch. Teeing off an hour in front of Chopra, he blitzed through the front nine in 30, buried his seventh birdie at No. 11 to get to 12 under and threaten K.J. Choi's course-record of 62. But Mahan missed a 7-foot birdie putt on the next hole and lost his magic touch long enough to erase any chance he had.

A two-putt birdie on the 15th and 27-foot eagle putt on the final hole gave him 64. All it got him was a share of fifth, with Nick Watney and 2001 champion Jim Furyk.

The last player with a shot at catching Chopra and Stricker was Stephen Ames, the final hope of all the Canadians crowding into Kapalua to follow he and Weir. Ames birdied three in a row starting with the 13th, and closed with birdie, to shoot 66 and get to 17-under. Even that wasn't enough.

"I thought 17 would be the number," said Ames, who has already booked his Christmas holiday at Kapalua this year. "Some of the guys took it a little lower than we expected."

NOTES

This week is the 10th anniversary of the Sony Open in Hawai'i. The PGA Tour's first full-field event of the year unofficially begins Tuesday afternoon with the King Auto Group Pro-Junior Skills Challenge at Waialae Country Club's 18th hole. The Pro-Am is Wednesday and the tournament tees off Thursday.

Paul Goydos is the defending Sony champion. Tadd Fujikawa, who turns 17 tomorrow, received an exemption to play after finishing 20th last year.

Fujikawa, who turned pro last summer, will also play in the Pro-Junior. His partner is Baldwin student Cassy Isagawa. Castle graduate Dean Wilson will team with Kristina Merkle, one of Fujikawa's classmates at Moanalua. Jerry Kelly's partner is Kamehameha's TJ Kua, whose uncle is 1990 Hawaiian Open champion David Ishii. Jim Furyk will play with Alex Ching, who is the amateur qualifier at this year's Sony. Bradley Shigezawa's pro partner will be named this week.

U.S. Open champ Angel Cabrera is making his first appearance at Waialae. Masters champ Zach Johnson is also in the field.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.