KA'UPULEHU-KONA, Hawaii -- The Champions Tour enjoyed an impressive start last week to the 2005 season.
Of course, the tour for professional golfers 50 years and older officially begins Friday at Hualalai Golf Club with the MasterCard Championship, the first of 28 tournaments on the Champions Tour, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary.
However, last week at the Sony Open in Hawaii, the Champions Tour made its presence felt. Four members competed in the first full-field event on the PGA TOUR and all four made the cut.
Craig Stadler, last year's Champions Tour Player of the Year, tied for ninth at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, while Peter Jacobsen tied for 28th, Dick Mast was a joint 47th and Tom Kite joint 72nd.
Kite, 55, intends to play nearly a full schedule on both tours this year. Mast got in the field at Waialae by successfully getting through Monday qualifying, and did the same this week at the Buick Invitational in California.
"They put on a great show last week," said Fuzzy Zoeller, who last year birdied the final three holes at the Jack Nicklaus-designed Hualalai Golf Club to edge Dana Quigley by one stroke. "The guys who play well (on the TOUR) have stayed active. Fifty is what old age used to be, but I'd have to say the number has moved to 60."
"This is the kind of thing I see all the time, and having played as a professional golfer for 52 years, I keep saying wherever I go, the world is completely naïve of the standard of play on the Champions Tour," Gary Player, one of five players to win the career grand slam, said. "It's one of the great phenomena in golf to see the standard of play."
Thirty-seven players are entered in the MastersCard Championship, which offers a first prize of $272,000 out of a $1.6 million purse. In its 22nd year, the event features winners of Champions Tour official money tournaments over the last two years and winners of golf's senior majors over the last five years. Player, Arnold Palmer, and Lee Trevino received special exemptions into the field.
Official prize money on the 2005 Champions Tour approaches $52 million, with an average purse of $1.8 million. The competition has never been keener and some players who have become eligible for senior golf have proved capable of remaining viable competitors on the TOUR.
Stadler, in 2003, became the first player to win events on the TOUR and the Champions Tour in the same calendar year; he did it back-to-back weeks, in fact. Jay Haas, who turned 52 in December, played on the most recent U.S. Ryder Cup team. Add the likes of Greg Norman, Curtis Strange, Scott Simpson and Loren Roberts, all who are eligible for the Champions Tour in 2005, and it's only going to become more difficult collect senior titles.
"It's just getting harder and harder out here. Players are that much better," said Hale Irwin, who has won a record 40 Champions Tour titles. "You can't quantify it, but each group of players that comes along, they are better and more fit, and they make for very formidable competition."
The Champions Tour is evolving in other ways. This year for the first time it is forbidding the use of carts during tournament rounds. Competitors still can employ a cart during pro-am rounds at 21 events. The exceptions are the five major championships, the First Tee Open at Pebble Beach and the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
"I think (getting rid of carts) is more in keeping with what golf is and what this Champions Tour has evolved into," Irwin, who has been hampered by back, neck and shoulder ailments for more than a year. "I think players who are fighting the change might consider going to the gym and preparing for it, because we've know this was coming for a while."
"The carts were here. The Tour was structured around those carts. I didn't see where they caused that big of a problem," said Zoeller, who has a history of back trouble. "(But) I'll go with the masses in whatever they tell me. I'm a walker, so I'll go with the flow."
Zoeller, who underwent and angioplasty procedure Dec. 30 for two blocked arteries, admits that he isn't quite prepared to defend his title. He started hitting balls after only five days off when he should have shut it down for a week or more.
"I rushed back a bit. There are still a few shots I'm a little weak on," said Zoeller, trying to become the first repeat winner since Al Geiberger in 1992. "I was supposed to be off a week, but I didn't have a week. Time was closing in on me. I wanted to be as ready as I could be."
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