A few years after helping Tyler Ogawa develop his game, Alex Ching found himself teeing up next to his former student with one of Hawaii’s most prestigious golf titles on the line.

Ching, the defending Mid-Pacific Open champion, and Ogawa, a freshman member of the University of Hawaii men’s golf team, had secured their division titles and ended regulation tied atop the overall leaderboard at 4 under par.

Ching then rolled in a 15-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to become the event’s first back-to-back champion since Tadd Fujikawa won the 2008 and ’09 titles.

Ching shot a 1-under-par 71 on Sunday — highlighting his round with a 60-foot putt for birdie from the fringe on the 17th hole — to edge Nick Mason by a shot and win the Professional Flight before fending off Ogawa in the playoff.

“It was a battle with Nick, it was just a battle with Mid-Pac, too, and an internal battle as always,” Ching said. “To do it back-to-back is pretty special.”

Ogawa shook off a slow start and played his back nine in 3 under to lead the field of amateurs in the Championship Flight, punctuating his round of 69 by rolling in a 30-foot birdie putt on No. 18 to also finish at 4 under.

Ching had coached Ogawa, then a high school sophomore, and was impressed by Ogawa’s approach to learning the game back then.

“He asked the best questions,” Ching recalled. “He was so curious and he wanted to learn how to play golf and he wanted to learn how to play properly.

“It wasn’t asking questions about, ‘how does my swing look?’ It was, ‘what do I do on this shot in this situation?’”

With the divisions decided, they returned to the 18th tee to determine the overall champion.

Ogawa gave himself a putt similar to the one he dropped in regulation, this time coming up a few inches short of the cup. Ching’s 9-iron from 138 yards out had set him up with an uphill putt for birdie and he drained it to put his name on the trophy for a second straight year.

“Honestly, on 18 anywhere on the green is a good shot,” Ching said. “But to have an uphill putt, I knew that I could be aggressive with it.

“That’s kind of my sweet spot, that’s my bread and butter and I knew I could make that putt.”

He wasn’t as sure on the putt that gave him the lead in the Professional Flight.

Tied with Mason at 3 under, Ching’s approach to the 17th green left him in the fringe, 60 feet from the pin.

On the walk up the fairway, Ching told his caddie, former Punahou and Notre Dame receiver Robby Toma, he planned to “cozy this up and then we’ll get to 18 and I’ll try to win it there.”

“And he goes, ‘every time I try to cozy it up I end up making it. So let’s just do that,’ ” Ching said.

Playing in the group ahead, Ogawa heard the cheers when Ching’s putt traversed the green and fell into the cup and “I knew that I needed to birdie 18 to get myself into a playoff.”

Ogawa dropped his downhill putt from the back of the green to clinch the Championship Flight and put himself in position to become the first amateur to win the overall title since Brandan Kop’s victory in 1995.

“I was going crazy, I was super pumped,” Ogawa said. “Some of my friends were pretty pumped and gave a big ol’ roar and that was really cool. It was a surreal experience.”

Mason, the 2012 and ’14 champion, had nearly joined the playoff when his chip for birdie on 18 hit the pin before settling inches from the hole.

Ogawa leads the UH men’s team with a 74.2 scoring average entering next week’s Big West Championships in La Quinta, Calif. He was 1 over for the tournament on Sunday after bogeys on No. 3 and 4, but birdied his next two holes to start his surge up the leaderboard.

“This is just a really big confidence booster for me that I can finish strong,” Ogawa said.

Although Ching’s final putt denied Ogawa a piece of tournament history, “I’m really glad he hit that putt,” Ogawa said.

“I learned a lot from him. He was actually one of the guys who really motivated me and made believe that I could do it even though I wasn’t obviously at that level. So it was really cool.”