It had been nearly 16 months since Webb Simpson’s breakthrough triumph at the 2012 U.S. Open, but during a week in Las Vegas in which the scores were exceptionally low, Simpson posted by far the lowest, returning to the winners circle at the Shriners Hospitals For Children Open.  He began with a Thursday 64 over the friendly TPC Summerlin layout but surprisingly sat well off the lead – that because J.J. Henry managed to card an 11-under-par 60, while Argentina’s Andres Romero nearly matched him with a 61.  Neither would factor into the action late, however, and in Romero’s case, the decline was spectacular: he carded a second-round 81, with the 20-stroke differential being both mind-boggling and enough to make him miss the cut.  Simpson, on the other hand, fired a Friday 63 to move out in front, then added a Saturday 67 to build his lead to four going into the final round.  On a golf course obviously prone to yielding low numbers, a round anywhere near par would surely have left him ripe to be overtaken, but Simpson instead gained momentum early with birdies at the 2nd and 3rd holes, then added one more at the 9th to go out in 32 and blow things wide open.  A three-birdie, one-bogey inward half made things largely a formality, leaving Simpson to coast home with a 66 and a six-shot victory………………Twenty-three-year-old Jin Jeong, a South Korean native currently playing out of Melbourne, claimed the first victory of his professional career at the ISPS Handa Perth International, defeating England’s Ross Fisher on the first hole of a playoff.  Jeong began the final round at the venerable Lake Karrinyup Country Club one behind less-touted Australian Brody Ninyette, then dug himself into a hole by four-putting the 322-yard 1st hole for an opening double bogey.  But the former British Amateur champion quickly got himself back on track with birdies at the 4th and 5th to turn in even par 36, then posted a flawless three-under-par 33 coming home to post a 10-under-par 278 total.  Fisher, meanwhile, had begun Sunday three strokes behind Ninyette before going out in 35, then charging home with an inward 33 of his own to draw even.  The playoff was contested over the tough 444-yard 18th, and while Jeong was making a routine par, Fisher saw his approach run off the back of the green into a tricky spot, setting up an awkward chip to 13 feet and, two putts later, a decisive bogey………………Thirty-seven-year-old Masanori Kobayashi labored for nearly a decade on the Japan Golf Tour before claiming his first victory in 2011 but he has since made an annual habit of it, first adding the 2012 Asia-Pacific Panasonic Open, then stepping up in class to claim the 2013 Japan Open.  Kobayashi played steady golf over the first few days, carding three consecutive rounds of 69 on the Ibaraki Golf Club’s East Course to stand second, three shots behind Koumei Oda, after 54 holes.  The final round was delayed until Monday by torrential rains, but two of those strokes disappeared immediately when play resumed as Oda bogeyed the 1st hole and Kobayashi promptly birdied the par-3 2nd.  Eventually a Kobayashi birdie at the 8th brought the two men level, and another birdie at the 10th moved Kobayashi in front for the first time.  That one-stroke margin remained when both players birdied the par-5 15th, and then expanded via an Oda bogey at the 17th and, ultimately, a final Kobayashi birdie at the last..................Life may truly have begun at 40 for Australian Scott Hend, who won for the third time on the 2013 Asian Tour at the Venetian Macau Open, edging India’s hard-charging Anirban Lahiri by three.  The week began inauspiciously for Hend, whose opening 74 left him in a tie for 74th place, six shots off the lead.  But from then on he played exceptional golf, getting back into the fray via a Friday 64 that included eagles on both back nine par 5s, then adding a seven-birdie, one-eagle 63 on Saturday to vault into a four-shot 54-hole lead.  His primary pursuer going into the final round was Hall-of-Famer Ernie Els, who duly made three early birdies to pull within two.  But a bogey at the 9th dampened Els’ momentum, and in the end it would be the 26-year-old Lahiri, who began the final round eight shots in arrears, that would mount the final charge.    This he managed by opening birdie-eagle en route to a course record-setting 62, but with Hend never wilting during his closing 67, the margin simply proved too great for Lahiri to overcome………………Thirty-eight-year-old Ulrich van den Berg claimed his first Sunshine Tour victory in three years at the weather-delayed BMG Classic, running away from the field by five strokes at the venerable Glendower Golf Club in Johannesburg.  Heavy rains on Saturday prevented the completion of the second round until Sunday morning, at the conclusion of which 12-time Sunshine Tour winner Hennie Otto led van den Berg by one.  The rain continued unabated for most of the finale and as Otto eagled the 522-yard 8th to go out in 34, van den Berg soon shot past him with a run of four consecutive birdies at holes 6-9.  He then cemented his position by posting three more birdies at the 13th, 14th and 16th, making late a bogey at the 222-yard 17th largely irrelevant.  Otto, who double-bogeyed the 10th and later added bogeys at both the 12t h and 17th, would eventually stumble home in 73, good enough to share second with Titch Moore, who carded a closing 70………………In one of the stranger and most controversial tournament endings in recent memory, South Korea’s Sung-Hoon Kang won the Kolon Korean Open by a single shot after apparent winner Hyung-Tae Kim was assessed a two-stroke penalty just as he stood on the verge of victory.  Kim and playing partner Soon-Sang Hoon were notified on the 17th tee – where he held a two-stroke lead - that they would be penalized for having allegedly grounded their clubs in a hazard at the 13th hole.  What followed was a bizarre sequence of events which saw Kim finish bogey-par to potentially win, then return to the 13th hole where a two-hour argument ensued before he accepted the penalty (which was only imposed after a 5-3 vote of the Korean Golf Association rules committee) under threat of disqualification.  This left Kang, the winner a week earlier of the Asian Tour’s CJ Invitational, as a reluctant champion, having avoided what would have been a six-man playoff by birdieing the 561-yard par-5 18th.  Lost in all of the chaos was the performance of world number two Rory McIlroy who, trying to play his way out of a season-long slump, charged home in 67 to finish in the five-man logjam that tied for second.