KA'UPULEHU, Hawai'i — With a series of wind-blown and wickedly brilliant shots, Fred Funk chased down Allen Doyle yesterday to win the MasterCard Championship at Hualalai.

It was Funk's third win in 14 Champions Tour starts. The last two have taken place in paradise, in diverse ways, after Funk was an "embarrassing" 28th here a year ago. "It's a mysterious game," he said.

He blitzed the Turtle Bay Championship a year ago, winning a title he will defend this week by a record 11 shots. Yesterday, the "Funkmeister" fell four back of Doyle after six holes, then ripped through Hualalai Golf Club and its Jekyll-and-Hyde winds to win by two.

The 51-year-old, who is sharing time on the PGA and Champions tours again this year, closed with a 7-under-par 65, birdieing half of the final 12 holes despite two short-putt hiccups. His winning total was 21-under 195.

Doyle, who birdied three of the first four, shot 68. He was even-par on his last 11 holes, when the wind and problems with his driver gave him the double whammy. Funk's frenetic finish made it a triple whammy.

Doyle, the 2001 Champions Player of the Year, has now gone 33 events without a win. It is a golf lifetime for a guy who has turned this senior tour into the mulligan of a lifetime, winning more than $12 million since turning pro at 47. Still, he was upbeat about his week at Hualalai.

"I finished awful last year," said Doyle, who fell out of the Top 20 for the first time. "I didn't have a Top 30 the last seven or eight tournaments so this is an encouraging sign that I can come back. I got myself in better shape and my game is more there. That's a treat.

"I didn't give it to Freddie. He had to pull out all the stops on the back side, which he did. It was one of those times when a guy just rips it out of your hands."

Bernhard Langer (65) and Jay Haas (67) finished fast but started too slow in Hualalai's eminently birdie-able conditions. They shared third at 17-under, while first-round leader Tom Purtzer (69) took fifth.

The first two were still in the equation when Funk missed short birdie putts in howling winds on the 15th and 16th, but he buried them with a birdie-birdie close. Funk flipped a chip shot in from 20 feet on the 17th then, from a fairway bunker 155 yards out on the final hole, he launched a 6-iron to seven feet.

"I just creamed it," Funk said. "But I pulled it and like most pulls they go a little farther. ... I was glad it was where it was (in the bunker). If it rolled up another yard or so I didn't have a shot. I'd have been underneath the lip. That was huge."

It was an awesome performance in very weird conditions. While Funk was erasing a four-shot deficit in the space of six holes, the wind suddenly started the opposite way, switched back, then flip-flopped again and began blowing at 20 mph-plus.

None of that fazed Funk, who got in "the so-called zone" on the eighth hole — nearly acing it — and simply zoned in.

His deficit was cut in half when Doyle failed to birdie the 10th — the second-easiest hole on the course — and dropped to one when the 59-year-old made his only bogey on the next hole.

Funk caught Doyle with his fourth birdie in five holes, at No. 12. Then he really went crazy.

On the next hole, his approach from 94 yards out hit the green and the brakes, nearly reversing into the hole for a kick-in birdie. Doyle, shockingly, covered that with his own birdie from 21 feet to desperately hang on.

"At the time it was a huge putt," said Doyle, whose remarkable short game gave him 11 one-putts yesterday. He is the first golfer in five years here to lead the putting statistics but not win.

"That was probably the best chipping display I've ever seen, other than (No.) 10," Funk said of Doyle. "Just ridiculous. Every one of them was like this, he didn't even have to think about it."

The two stayed tied through the next two holes, when Funk misfired on a couple four-footers, but he shook that disappointment off and played the final two flawlessly, again. His focus from the moment Doyle separated himself by four was on having fun — "regardless of what Allen does." It is something he has learned in his senior years.

"I was just trying to stay focused and have fun as much as I could, and enjoy my game, let my game enfold," Funk said. "I'm working on things to let my swing go, don't have a swing thought. I'm having a hard time doing that, there's always one stupid thought."

Winning the $300,000 first-prize check provided all kinds of fun. Funk has now earned more than $500,000 the past three weeks in Hawai'i. His "throw it out there" goal this year is to win $2 million on each tour since he won't play enough on either to finish high on the FedEx or Schwab Cup standings.

"I've got to have my own little cup," Funk said.

NOTES

Peter Jacobsen withdrew from the Turtle Bay Championship after suffering a knee injury on the Big Island. His absence puts Walt Zembriski in.

Jacobsen finished 37th — next to last — at Hualalai. Lee Trevino was last, and still won $10,000. At 68, Trevino was the oldest in the event and the only one to finish over par — at 1-over.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.