vancouv,
I had the same experience as you: passed all of my PPL flight test except the PFL. I crowded the field, resulting in way too much height on final; and the examiner and I agreed that I would not have made the field successfully if it had been 'the real thing'. Eveything else went fine - including the simulated emergency call and the rest of the PFL - and it was a frustrating experience to get only a partial pass.
I went up with the examiner a week later and completed the PFL re-test, fortunately without incident.
What made this more embarrasing than it would otherwise have been is that at the time I had about 50 hours P1 time in sailplanes! :o
MLS-12D