Lunde in final drive for $1 million prize

Bill Lunde probably didn't want to jinx his chance to win a million dollars. So he kept quiet.

Until now.

The 35-year-old PGA Tour player, who helped UNLV claim the 1998 NCAA championship, has been leading the Kodak Challenge since March. But with a two-shot lead entering the final event, Lunde is starting to think about the $1 million he'll win if he can hold on at the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals Classic, which begins today at Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

"Even though I've been in the lead for months, I wasn't really in a position to celebrate," Lunde said. "But with a two-shot lead and one event left, yeah, I'm thinking about winning it."

The Kodak Challenge is a seasonlong event held in conjunction with the PGA Tour. Each week, one hole at the tour stop is designated as the Kodak hole, and the player who has the best score playing a minimum of 18 holes throughout the 30-hole event wins $1 million.

Lunde is at 19 under par, thanks to an eagle he made at the par-5 No. 16 at TPC Summerlin during the third round of the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open this month.

The only person who can catch Lunde is Cameron Tringale, who will need to make eagle at the par-4 No. 17 at Walt Disney World Resort's Magnolia Course. That hole has yielded only five eagles on tour since 1983, the last one coming in 2009 by Charles Warren.

Lunde wasn't going to play this week. But with victory in sight and a chance to lock up the competition with a birdie, regardless of whether Tringale makes an eagle, he changed his mind.

"You want to be there for the final event," said Lunde, who has earned $639,548 this year and is No. 126 on the tour's money list. "It's been a long year, grinding away. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to it ending."

Lunde has led the competition since March. He admits to having been lucky along the way, citing a birdie at the Travelers Championship in late June and a long birdie putt during the third round of the AT&T National a week later.

"I hit one of the great flop shots of my life at Hartford," he said of the Travelers. "If it's not the Kodak hole, I'm probably not even trying that shot.

"In Philly (at the AT&T), I made like a 60-foot putt that rattled in. That's when I first started thinking I could win this thing. So every week, it has been on my mind. Even when I wasn't playing well, I've had the Kodak hole to fall back on. I've had the mindset that if I can make birdie at the Kodak hole, it helps take the edge off the rest of my game that week and I would be able to come away with something positive for the week."

Lunde said he and wife Dana plan to buy a bigger house in Las Vegas with the $1 million.

"The house thing is something my wife and I have been talking about just because you and I both know what the Vegas housing market is, and you can get a lot right now for the money," Lunde said. "We love the house we live in now, but if you run full speed out the back door, you won't be able to stop in time before you hit the wall. With a yellow lab, we would like to have more of a yard.

"So we've been shopping around for six months, not just thinking that if I win this Kodak deal we're going to do it. So that's something that could definitely make that new purchase a lot easier and more stress free. I think we're very modest people, kind of scared to do the wrong thing vs. what can I do with all this money."

Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter @stevecarprj.