There are rounds in the Harbour Pointe Open that people talk about for years. The 15 foot putt that tracks perfectly and drops. The six footer that burns the edge and stays out. The tee shot on a 145-yard par 3 over water that the wind decides it has a different plan for. The 2026 HPO championship round at Paint Creek Golf Course produced all of those in the space of twenty minutes on the most pressure-packed finishing hole the Mulligan Tour has staged all season, and by the time Greg Fobare pulled his ball from the cup on the fourth hole of the aggregate putt-off tiebreaker, he had earned every dollar of the $50 first-place check and a spot in the HPO champion’s gallery that has been building since 1999. Greg Fobare. 2026 Harbour Pointe Open champion.
The Sunday morning at Paint Creek opened with three groups navigating the championship round in positions that, through eighteen holes, were never going to threaten the final wave. Mike Geisser turned in one of the more impressive Sunday performances in the field — net 73 (+2) from the senior tees on a course rated 68.70/133 from the white tees, earning a share of the overall money alongside Rich Dunmore and Jeff Feikens. Chuck Withey had the cleanest Sunday of any player outside the final group, posting a net 72 (+1) from a gross 83 on a slope-137 layout that does not hand out numbers like that without a fight. Both players moved up the 36-hole combined leaderboard and cashed checks. The leaderboard, however, belonged to the players who teed off last.
Ferlito, Fobare, Barnes, and Levine had started Round 2 occupying the top four positions on the HPO leaderboard. They were also going to finish with four of the top five spots. But Saturday’s order did not survive Sunday. John Ferlito — the Round 1 leader who had come in as the hottest player on the Mulligan Tour — shot a Round 2 net 76 (+5) and watched the lead he built Saturday evaporate hole by hole. He finishes fourth in the combined standings at 148, collecting $25, and leaves Paint Creek knowing the week was right until it wasn’t.
The three players who chased each other all day were Levine, Fobare, and Barnes. Levine was brilliant on Sunday. Net 69 (-2). Five birdies. Two eagles. The best round of the championship by two strokes. He built a lead in the middle of the round and maintained it through the back nine while Fobare, himself posting five birdies in Round 2, kept threatening. Barnes did what Barnes does — shot a gross 76 on the most difficult course in the Mulligan Tour calendar, leaving him even for the day, and stayed close enough that the 36th hole still mattered.
Then came the 36th hole. A 145-yard par 3. A peninsula green guarded by water on three sides. A front pin position that offers almost no margin for error. A gusty breeze in the players’ faces. Levine in the lead by one over Fobare, two over Barnes.
Barnes hit his tee shot to six feet. Levine also hit it to six feet. Fobare’s ball was tracking toward the flag before the wind got it — the gust caught the shot at exactly the wrong moment and dropped it on the front fringe, fifteen feet away. Barnes went first and buried his putt for birdie. He was now one stroke behind Levine, who had six feet for the HPO title. Fobare stood on the fringe with a slightly uphill putt carrying about ten inches of left-to-right break and a 36-hole major on the other end of it. He didn’t look at the leaderboard. He read the putt, hit it, and watched it fall into the cup. Birdie. Fobare tied for the lead at 144.
Levine stood over a six-footer that would make him the 2026 HPO champion. The putt burned the left edge and stayed out. Two players finished at 144. One trophy to give.
The aggregate putt-off played out exactly like the 36 holes that preceded it — Fobare and Levine within a stroke of each other at every turn, neither able to separate. Through three holes of the four-hole format they were tied, with one hole left and a 10-footer sitting between them and sudden death. Fobare stepped up and drained it — the same composure he showed on the 36th green, the same result. Levine’s putt burned the edge again. The pattern had held all weekend, and now it had a winner. Greg Fobare. 2026 Harbour Pointe Open champion.
It is the second major won in a putt-off in recent HPO history. It is the second time in 2026 that Fobare has won in some form of sudden-death competition. And it puts one of the year’s most consistent performers on the HPO champion list alongside Brian Lardin, Tim Markel, Jeff Pasz, and the names that define this event’s quarter-century of history. Stewart Levine finishes second with $40 after the best individual Sunday of the championship. Jonathan Barnes finishes third at 145 combined with $30 and another top-three result at a major that should have been a win. The HPO delivered. Paint Creek always does.