Golf: Kidd holds on for City Championship title

No matter how hard he tried, Johnny Kidd couldn’t put together the same birdie-littered round of golf that he had breezed through in the first couple of rounds.

He didn’t have to.

Playing solid, mistake-free golf on the back nine, Kidd held off Ciro Baeza, True Graves and a hard-charging Mark Jones Jr. to win the Odessa City Championship at 9-under-par.

“I shot over (37) on the front, and that’s not what you want to do on the last day,” Kidd said. “But I played better on the back.”

When the final group — Kidd, Baeza and Graves — made the turn, Baeza had closed the three-stroke lead Kidd entered the day holding to just one.

Baeza opened the day with a birdie on both No. 1 and No. 2, and even though he took a double bogey on No. 7, another birdie on No. 8 and a bogey from Kidd on No. 9 put Baeza within striking distance.

“He played good on the front,” Kidd said. “He brought it back, he scared me for a while. I wasn’t playing good at all.”

At the turn, Kidd knew he needed to hold off Baeza.

But a bit of confusion on Baeza’s tee shot off of the 412-yard, par-4 No. 10 threw off his game. When he hit the ball, all three golfers thought his ball had bounced into the brush on the left side of the fairway.

Members of the gallery tried to help Baeza look for his ball in the brush for several minutes before Kidd realized it had nestled itself in the fairway at the bottom of a hill.

“When you try to look for the ball, and it’s in the middle of the fairway, I think that kind of stalled me a little bit,” Baeza said. “I picked the wrong line and ended up on the left.”

At No. 11, Baeza was forced to take a drop because his ball sandwiched itself into the bottom of a bush and couldn’t be played.

Two holes into the back nine, Baeza had two bogeys, and mistake-free play by Kidd had given him back the three-stroke lead he had at the beginning of the round.

For most of the round, Graves looked like he could have posted the type of low round needed to put some pressure on Kidd, but his short game kept coming up inches away from falling in the cup.

Putt after putt just missed. On No. 13, Graves came up with a beautiful chip off the top of a hill that looked like it was headed for an eagle, but the ball just missed.

Only Jones Jr. put together the kind of round it would have taken to knock Kidd off the top of the leaderboard.

Deadly with his irons all day long, Jones, Jr. carded a 4-under 68 to leapfrog both Baeza, who shot a 3-over 75, and Graves, whose even-par 72 left those two in a tie for third place.

Catching Kidd, though, would have taken a spectacular round for Jones Jr., who entered the day at 1-under, eight strokes behind Kidd.

“I knew I was going to have to shoot 63 to come back and beat Johnny,” Jones Jr. said.

Kidd only had to shoot an even-par 72 to win the tournament by four strokes.

Sometimes all it takes is a solid day to finish the job.