Fred Couples won the Charles Schwab Championship and the $440,000 first place check, but Kenny Perry won the season-long Charles Schwab Cup and the $1 million that goes along with it.
Fred Couples collected his first Champions Tour win of 2013 in the final event of the season. He has had a very good year with nine top-10 finishes, including four runners-up and one third.
Couples won 15 events on the PGA Tour including the 1992 Masters and he has added another 10 wins on the Champions Tour.
The win at TPC Harding Park brings his total earning for the year to $1.7 million, plus he will collect another $300,000 bonus for finishing in third place in the Charles Schwab Cup standings.
Bernhard Langer added one more top-10 finish to his phenomenal year. He posted 17 top-10 finishes in 23 starts this season and earned over $2.2 million.
He needed to win this week to have any chance to pass Perry and capture his second Charles Schwab Cup. He fell just short, but will win a $500,000 bonus for finishing in second place in the Charles Schwab Cup race.
Langer will also win the Arnold Palmer Award for leading the Champions Tour money list.
Kenny Perry finished sixth in the Charles Schwab Championship, but that was good enough to edge out Langer and win the Charles Schwab Cup. He won $2.1 million for the year and will also pocket the $1 million bonus that goes to the Charles Schwab Cup points leader.
Perry had $31 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour, but never won a major title. He was close several times, but was never quite able to close the deal. He was second in the 1996 PGA Championship, runner-up in the 2009 Masters and third in the 2003 U.S. Open.
In 2008, he won three events, earned $4.6 million and was the leader in the FedEx Cup standings until the Tour Championship. Perry finished T-24 in the final event of 2008 and allowed his good friend Vijay Singh to slip past him.
Once again, he was close but no cigar.
Two major titles on the 2013 Champions Tour and the Charles Schwab Cup helps erase the bitter taste of being so close so many times in the past.
This ends the 2013 Champions Tour season. 2014 will begin at the Mitsubishi Electric PGA Champions Tour at Hualalai January 16-19, 2014.