The USGA received 8,390 entries for the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, Calif., with the applicants ranging in age from 12 (Rico Hoey, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.) to 79 (Harris Moore Jr., Los Angeles).

Tiger Woods is among eight past champions fully exempt for the championship June 12-15. Woods, the 2000 and 2002 winner, is exempt in eight different categories, the most of any of the 58 golfers currently exempt.

Entries were received from golfers in all 50 states and 68 foreign countries, including professionals from Ghana, Nigeria and Guatemala.

Local qualifying begins May 5 at 111 sites.

--Bill Fields

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Playing 36 holes with a tour pro is an education you don't quite get watching on television or walking in the gallery. You can hear the sound of the shots and feel the tempo, especially when someone has as fluid a swing as Jerry Pate, our pro Thursday in the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf pro-am.

Pate hadn't played a full round in a few weeks because of minor shoulder and knee injuries--he was wearing a neoprene brace on his left knee--but hit some beautiful shots. None was better than his final full shot of the day. On our group's final hole, the par-3 third, Pate's 3-wood from 227 yards into the wind faded about five yards just as he diagrammed it and finished four feet short of the hole.

He made the the birdie with a putter that is older than a lot of players on the PGA Tour, a Wilson Arnold Palmer blade he got in 1971 when he was a freshman at Alabama.

"I haven't used this putter in years," he said. "I won the [1974] U.S. Amateur with it. I won the [1982] TPC with it. I haven't used it on the Champions Tour, but at times I get a little too mechanical with a center-shafted, Ping-type putter. I like a heel-shafted putter at times where I can swing the toe a little
bit."

We had another 60 Thursday, for a two-day best-ball net total of 120, which beat 11 teams but was a whopping 14 strokes behind the pro-am winners (Shapiro, Shapiro, Green and Guernsey) who followed up their 51 with a 55.

Pate will be paired with his old Southeastern Conference rival Andy Bean in the tournament proper starting Friday. The Club at Savannah Harbor will be cleared of the amateur flotsam. I go back to work with a few swing thoughts from Pate and a reinforcement that the game they play and the one most of the rest of us play are different beasts.

--Bill Fields

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Nerves, rust and a good old-fashioned talent deficit were a potent cocktail at 7:30 Wednesday morning. The first day of the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf pro-am began with a shotgun start, but I had a water pistol that wouldn't shoot straight.

I had gotten up early and eaten oatmeal for breakfast, worked my way through the bag on the range and left the practice green bursting with confidence having made two six-footers in a row.

Two holes in, I was wondering if I eventually was going to have to poach a couple of golf balls from our pro, Lonnie Nielsen.

Fortunately I found a temporary tourniquet for the mess I was making. At least on occasion, my swing tempo slowed to something approaching the legal limit. I two-putted from 100 feet on the 12th hole. I chipped nicely. I stayed out of everybody's through-line.

Besides, it was a team game and I had some good partners. I thought Leo Story, a 2-handicap local banker, had taken a wrong turn on the way to a long-drive contest, so formidable were many of his tee shots. After one of my better drives, Leo's ball was still a Ray Guy punt beyond mine. At 71, Jim Smith, a fixture in Savannah golf circles, was amazing. Just two weeks ago he had gotten dizzy on the course and gone to his doctor, who discovered a blocked heart artery. He had a stent put in. All Jim did Wednesday was shoot a neat 76, making 4-for-3 on the par-5 fourth hole to well-deserved applause from a few friends who followed us around. Kim Iocovozzi, a Savannah art dealer and tournament volunteer vice-chairman, struggled a bit on the greens but hung in there and had his moments.

Thanks to those guys and a couple of early birdies by Nielsen, we were eight under through our first nine holes before cooling down. Our 12-under best-ball net 60 beat a few of the 48 teams, but we can barely see the leaders (R.W. Eaks' team of Fred Shapiro, Bruce Shapiro, James Green and Kevin Guernsey), who carded a 51.

Tough crowd.

-- Bill Fields

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Flying down to the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf, the smart play for a golfer of questionable ability with a long winter behind him and two days of pro-am golf ahead of him would have been to read Hogan or Snead, Harmon or Haney--to hope immersion in the fine points of the game would smooth all the rough edges.

I opted for the entertaining choice, the late George Plimpton's 1968 classic The Bogey Man, the account of his travails in three PGA Tour pro-ams back when woods were wood and the Crosby was the Crosby. Plimpton was an 18-handicap with a golf club but scratch with a typewriter. Better to laugh a little bit, I thought, than risk catching one swing thought too many.

When I got on the ground in coastal Georgia, I could have searched for a large bucket of practice balls, but sought to gather a couple of stories instead. One of the first people I ran into at The Club at Savannah Harbor was John Buchna, who has caddied for Joey Sindelar for 25 years. That's a lot of pro-ams, a lot of nervous amateurs, a lot of shots you don't usually see on Sunday afternoons.

"I've seen them hit scoreboards," Buchna said. "I've seen them hit cars out in the middle of a lake. I've seen them hit shots that end up behind them. If you top a ball just right,  the spin moves it in the wrong direction."

I would love to hit a few fairways, make a few pars, avoid having a to swipe at a ball lodged head-high in a tree, as Plimpton did.

If you cover golf, you don't pay much attention to pro-ams until you find yourself playing in one. In reporting on the Champions Tour since 2001, I've had the chance to play several informal rounds with senior pros. David Eger, Mark McNulty and Graham Marsh kindly put up with me during a round at Del Monte GC prior to The First Tee Open a couple of years ago.

Another year at that event, I got to play Pebble Beach with Peter Jacobsen and his junior partner in a practice round. Dana Quigley, Jim Thorpe and Jack Fleck were amiable partners in outings. My only sour experience was one round with an old pro who spoke as few words over 18 holes as I hit good shots, which was to say not many at all.

That won't be an issue over the next two days. Lonnie Nielsen is our pro today, followed by Jerry Pate on Thursday afternoon. I just hope Nielsen doesn't remember my leaving him out of a preseason top-30 ranking a few years ago (as one of his fans let me know). And I hope Pate doesn't recall the drive I pushed halfway to the Statue of Liberty as he played along for a hole or two during a round at Liberty National two years ago.

But as John Jacobs told me Tuesday, the pros don't care what the amateurs shoot. There isn't a bad shot they haven't seen. There was the fellow who was so nervous on the first tee in Tampa a couple of years ago that he couldn't get his ball to rest on a tee. "I teed up his ball for three of the first six holes," Jacobs said, "but he played pretty well after that."

Hope was high at the pro-am draw party Tuesday evening. "Have some fun, make some birdies," master of ceremonies Andy North told the audience.

The first command was within reach. And so were the shrimp.

--Bill Fields

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- When Tiger Woods holed about a 50-foot birdie putt on the 11th hole Sunday, pulling within five of Trevor Immelman, for me it felt a bit like it did a couple of weeks ago when North Carolina, my alma mater, had cut a 28-point deficit to Kansas in the Final Four to four points. There was simply too much ground to make up, and it had been too much of a struggle just to get to that point. Kansas reasserted itself and won going away over the Tar Heels, just as Immelman did over Woods and the rest of the pack at a testy, breezy Augusta National GC.

Other than Woods, nobody in his 20s had won the Masters since Jose Maria Olazabal in 1994. It was time for another young player to claim a green jacket, and Immelman, withstanding a couple of very shaky moments late, was up to the task. Despite a cacophony of Grand Slam talk about Woods, his ultimate golf dream was wilted by four frustrating days, particularly with the putter. Woods putts so well so often that when he looks human on the greens, as he did on several failures inside eight feet Sunday, it's a shock.

It's also golf. Woods' long-term lease on success is so formidable that a bad day can reinforce how much of a thick-steel lock he often is when he is in contention.

Woods' 2008 Grand Slam hopes have been extinguished, but you can bet he will show up at Torrey Pines ready to roll in the U.S. Open. For the moment, all credit should go to Immelman, who has come back from some health issues and was resilient when he had to be. In the mold of his countryman-idol Gary Player, Immelman is a scrapper, perhaps ready to be to Woods what Player was to Jack Nicklaus. Sunday was a giant step on what could be a great journey.

--Bill Fields

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Zach Johnson might not repeat as Masters champion, but he is putting up a good defense. The Iowa native posted a four-under 68 Saturday to vault from T-29 after 36 holes to T-7 at two-under 214.

Johnson's climb onto the leader board came a day after paying too much attention to where he stood in the tournament Friday en route to his second-round 76. "I think there are some mental differences for sure [between Friday and today]," Johnson said. "I think I might have looked at the board a few too many times yesterday. [I was] thinking, 'I've got to pick up some shots,' rather than letting the course and the shots come to me. There are certain courses you might be able to do that, [but] this is far from one of them."

Barring some dramatic collapses Sunday by the players leading the way -- Trevor Immelman, Steve Flesch, Brandt Snedeker and Paul Casey -- Johnson will have a lot of ground to make up. He knows how those players will be feeling tonight in position to win their first major as he did in 2007.

"You know, you've got the jitters, you've got the nerves certainly," Johnson said when asked what it feels like on the eve of a final round. "There's not any one of those guys who couldn't win a major as far as I'm concerned. It's just a matter of staying mentally fresh and not letting things get you down. You're going to get some bad breaks and hit some great shots and make pars or bogeys. It's a matter of staying in it."

Just as Johnson did with a tidy day at the office Saturday.

-- Bill Fields

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Before I turned into a full time golf writer I was lucky enough to photograph the Masters from 1985 to 1995. And on a nice day when some golfer pulls off a roar-worthy shot and provides a reaction to match, it makes me yearn a bit for those days when I was carrying a camera instead of a notebook.

But on a rainy day -- a storm just suspended play at Augusta National about a half-hour ago -- the nostalgia doesn't last long.

While it is no fun to shoot a tournament in searing heat, wet weather is the worst. While golf photographers benefit from lighter, more breathable rainwear just like golfers do, keeping cameras and lenses dry is still a pain. But it was even more of a chore before the advent of high-tech, waterproof covers for one's photo gear.

My memory of the final round of the 1989 Masters is that the rain hardly let up all day, and by the time Nick Faldo won a playoff over Scott Hoch, almost everybody had a camera go dead because of the unrelenting moisture. At least that day, for me, I didn't have a damp camera "freak out" the way I had one do to me on a soggy afternoon at the LPGA Championship one year, when it fired continuously while Laura Davies was over a tee shot and kept shooting until I scrambled away from the tee and pulled out the battery pack.

So when you see a good golf photograph taken on a rainy day, appreciate it.

-- Bill Fields

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- At five-under 139, tied for third with Ian Poulter and Steve Flesch only three strokes behind 36-hole leader Trevor Immelman, Phil Mickelson starts the weekend not only with an excellent chance to win but also to polish his reputation as a golfer who has made a significant mark despite competing in the Age of Tiger.

A victory would be Mickelson's third at Augusta National, which would tie him with Jimmy Demaret (1940, 1947, 1950), Sam Snead (1949, 1952, 1954), Gary Player (1961, 1974, 1978) and Nick Faldo (1989, 1990, 1996) on the all-time Masters victory list. Moreover, it would give him a distinction that none of Jack Nicklaus' rivals were ever able to achieve when they were going against the best player of his day.

From the time Nicklaus won his first Masters (1963) until his sixth and final triumph (1986), no other player was able to claim more than two green jackets -- not even Tom Watson, who supplanted Nicklaus as golf's No. 1 in the late-1970s. And several golfers -- notably Lee Trevino, Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller -- couldn't find the secret to winning a single Masters title during the Golden Bear's reign.

-- Bill Fields

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Will youth be served this weekend at the Masters? Trevor Immelman leads the season's first major championship after 36 holes at eight-under 136 with Brandt Snedeker one shot behind. The interesting thing about this is that Immelman is only 28 years old, while Snedeker is 27.

While it's true that many golfers mature in their 30s and play their best golf in that decade, the game's best players traditionally have won majors before their 30th birthday. It has been said often that Augusta National's greens are suited to a young man's nerves. But Immelman and Snedeker are trying to do something that -- except for Tiger Woods, who won his four Masters titles when he was in his 20s -- hasn't been done lately at Augusta National, where winners have been an average of 32.63 years old.

Other than Woods, the last golfer in his 20s to claim a green jacket was Jose Maria Olazabal, who was 28 when he won his first Masters in 1994. Before that, you have to go back to Larry Mize's victory in 1987. The Augusta native was 28 when he beat Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros in a playoff.

Immelman could have something going for him this weekend: This is his sixth Masters appearance, and the average number of attempts before someone's first victory at Augusta National is ... six. This is Snedeker's second Masters, his first as a professional.

-- Bill Fields

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Tom Watson, the 58-year-old two-time Masters champion, shot his second consecutive 75 Friday, finishing 36 holes of the Masters at six-over 150. It could have been a bit better if not for a mental lapse on the third green of Augusta National GC when he forgot to replace his marker after moving out of fellow competitor John Senden's line.

"I'm gettting old," Watson said. "Last year I hit the wrong ball by mistake, and today I forgot to move my ball back when I moved the coin for a two-stroke penalty. I'm losing strokes the easy way by doing stupid things."

Watson had a front-row seat for the fine 68 shot by fellow competitor Brandt Snedeker, whose imagination and confidently quick style are somewhat reminiscent of a young Watson. Snedeker, in fact, patterned his game after Watson's.

"He's got a lot of tools, but the imagination is what impresses me," said Watson. "He's got a wonderful imagination, and you have to have that here."

Snedeker's chip-in birdie at the par-3 sixth -- where Snedeker played a shot with his wedge even though his ball was on the green -- definitely caught Watson's eye. "He was dead with the putter in his hand and he knew it," Watson said. "The best he was going to make was 4 or maybe 5 and he chips it in. That's very impressive."

-- Bill Fields

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Urged by Gary Player, six-time Masters champion Jack Nicklaus played the back nine at Augusta National GC with his longtime friend Wednesday morning before joining Player and Arnold Palmer in the Par-3 Contest.

“I shot my 40-ish and got out of there,” said the 68-year-old Nicklaus, who played his last competitive round at the Masters in 2005. “No illusions of grandeur.”

While Nicklaus finished T-6 in the 1998 Masters at age 58, a decade later on a course significantly lengthened, he was outmanned on his approaches. “I hit a 3-wood into 10, a 4-wood at 11, a 3-iron that should have been a 5-wood at 14. I hit Ike’s Tree at 17 and hit a 4-wood there and a 5-wood at 18. I probably wouldn’t have played nine holes if I didn’t have one of my grandsons, Jackie, on the bag. I thought it would be a nice experience for him to see the back nine.”

Nicklaus doesn’t play much golf these days, but he hasn’t forgotten how as evidenced by his recent round at The Bear’s Club in Jupiter, Fla. “Matter of fact, Sunday, I shot my age there,” Nicklaus said. “Members’ tees, but still shot my age. That’s the first time I’ve shot my age since I was 64.”

On the second hole of the Par-3 Tournament, Nicklaus hit his tee shot to seven inches, the best of the day so far on that hole.

Tomorrow the real action begins in the tournament Nicklaus used to rule, the one now ruled by Tiger Woods. “I don’t know how to make odds,” Nicklaus said to a reporter who asked him to do just that. “Is he [Woods] the favorite by a mile? Yeah, of course he is.”

--Bill Fields

 

If any first-time Masters participant is lucky the week, he'll find himself in a practice-round pairing with a former champion who has been there and done that. The rookie could get a memory he won't soon forget.

In his classic 1970 book Pro, still one of the best accounts of life on tour, Frank Beard remembered his experiences playing with three Masters champions--Henry Picard (1938), Ralph Guldahl (1939) and Herman Keiser (1946)--during his first visit to Augusta National G.C. in 1965.

"My round with them went faster than any round I've ever played in my life, it was so fascinating," Beard wrote. "They mentioned trees that had been knocked down by lightning and mounds that had been leveled. . . . For me, it was like participating in history. It was like being a modern big-league baseball player and batting against Walter Johnson or being a modern professional football player and tackling Red Grange. It was beautiful."

And Beard had some advice that would come in handy for this year's first-timers. "You can lick this course with your normal game--f you ever calm down enough to play your normal game," he wrote.

Some things haven't changed.

--Bill Fields

IRVING, Tex. -- Under sunny skies with a solid drive in the fairway off the first tee Tuesday morning, course architect D.A. Weibring christened the redesigned TPC Four Seasons Las Colinas course. It was a symbolic strike for a $10 million project that was close to Weibring's heart and dogged by persistent rains once the renovation began May 10 of last year.

"There were a lot of people who didn't think we'd be standing here," said Weibring, on hand for a preview of the layout that will host the EDS Byron Nelson Championship in late April. "We're real happy to be at the finish line. I'm not sure we'd want to start over."

The travails of the re-do, which Weibring completed with his partner at Golf Resources Group, Steve Wolfard, seemed a bit of a distant memory on this clear morning. Although the last portion of the course wasn't sodded until mid-October, a heavy overseeding of winter rye has the course looking good.

The new greens are smooth, a sharp contrast to the mediocre putting surfaces that caused so much consternation during the 2007 Nelson. As to amplify that point, TPC director of golf Paul Earnest casually holed a 60-foot putt using a driver on the 18th green. "That's a good omen right there," said Weibring, who admitted during some of the more trying days of his job to pausing by the 9 1/2-foot statue of Nelson near the first tee and asking for a little divine intervention. "I'd say, 'I know you're close to 'the man,' we need a little help here.' "

While utilizing the old routing, Weibring and Wolfard produced a cleaner design by improving sight lines, softening mounds, relocating 165 trees and trying to provide players with more options, particularly around the greens. "We tried to do it naturally so it fit the eye and made it fair," said Weibring, who heard plenty of comments from PGA Tour players that they didn't like the number of "awkward" tee shots. Dallas-area residents and tour pros J.J. Henry and Harrison Frazar were consultants to Weibring.

The result is more visually appealing layout that Weibring and tournament officials hope will eventually lure more top players back to the tournament that was so closely linked to Nelson, one of golf's great gentlemen and a fixture at the tournament for decades until his death in 2006. Weibring said his motivation was "to pay respect to Byron. That started at the top and went all the way down to the guys that are still out there on the course working."

The Nelson has a tough spot on the schedule this year, two weeks after the Masters and before the Wachovia Championship and the Players. "It's a very challenging date," Weibring said. "I've been on the record about that. I don't think that's the way you show respect for Byron and the tournament raising the most [charity] money on tour."

First things first. If Henry's peers who do come and compete next month like the new look as much as he did when he played the layout Monday, things will be looking up. "I was blown away," Henry said before heading off to New Orleans for this week's tournament. For now, it was simply time to take a bow.

--Bill Fields

ORLANDO, FLA. -- John Daly missed his 8:40 a.m. pro-am tee time Wednesday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club & Lodge. PGA Tour media official Joel Schuchmann said  the tour is investigating what caused Daly to miss his time and will determine later today if he will be eligible to play in the tournament.

Failing to show up for a PGA Tour pro-am causes a player to be ineligible to compete in the tournament unless there is an excuse for extenuating circumstances.

Daly received a sponsor's exemption to compete at Bay Hill, hoping to revive a lackluster season. He has missed three cuts, withdrawn once and finished T-60 in the  Mayakoba Classic.

On Tuesday, instructor Butch Harmon, who had been trying to help Daly over the last few weeks, told the Associated Press he was not going to work with Daly anymore because of the golfer's lack of commitment. "My whole goal for him was he's got to show me golf is the most important thing in his life," Harmon said. "And the most important thing in his life is getting drunk."

Daly's mindset, Harmon said, was much different from that of world-class players. "All the guys I work with are working their [tails] off," Harmon told the AP. "John didn't have it. I like the kid, but he's got to get his head on straight. The partying and other shenanigans, if that's the way he wants to be, I don't choose to be a part of it."

Asked in a press conference about Daly Wednesday, Phil Mickelson said, "It's just not my role to talk about it or get involved in it. I wish him well. I hope things get better. I think we all do."

Update 03/12/2008: Daly has been ruled ineligible for the tournament and is not in the Arnold Palmer Invitational field.

--Bill Fields

(Photo: Marc Feldman/Getty Images)

Jerry Pate went almost 24 years between his last victory on the PGA Tour and his first on the Champions Tour, so what if almost 24 months elapsed between his first senior win and Sunday's triumph at the Turtle Bay Championship?

The oft-injured Pate, driven off the PGA Tour because of shoulder woes when he was only 28, kept his game tidy in extreme winds on Oahu that made the final round on Turtle Bay's Palmer course quite a challenge--from tee to green and once you got there.

"I was playing with Scott Simpson," Pate said Monday morning, "and he had about a 30-foot putt on the 16th hole and putted it right off the green into a hazard. The ball just kept going."

The final round began as a dogfight among the final pairing of Gil Morgan, Jim Thorpe and Bernhard Langer, but the trio had its problems. Pate, four strokes behind when the day began, birdied Nos. 8-10, then settled in with seven straight pars that pretty much settled the outcome, giving the 54-year-old his first win since the 2006 Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am at 5-under 211.

The week was an emotional one for Pate, who dedicated his victory to the memory of Justin Wilk, the 25-year-old son of his good friend Kevin Wilk, who died unexpectedly Jan. 8. "It was devastating for Kevin," Pate said. "He had gotten an e-mail from his son the day before he died, talking about much he was looking forward to this year, and then, boom, the next day they find him dead. I told Kevin I was going to Hawaii for two tournaments, and I was going to win one of them for Justin."

An Alabama physical therapist, Kevin Wilk guided Pate through many hours of rehabilitation following the golfer's shoulder surgeries in 2003 and 2006. "This game is so crazy," Pate said. "I won in Tampa two years ago then got hurt a month later and had to have another surgery. And then after being out of the game for six months, I kind of lost my putting. All last year I had a mechanical flaw--I was kind of dragging the putter grip back first and creating a bad angle with my left wrist. I tell you, I was missing putts from a foot. It's not like I was nervous and had the yips, I just mechanically couldn't release the putter."

Pate, 41st on the 2007 money list, finally figured out what was wrong with his putting stroke last fall, and he came into the new year confident that a career with so many detours might go smoothly for a while. Sunday's win makes him fully exempt and has broadened his optimism.

"I can challenge them," he said of tour standouts such as Jay Haas and Loren Roberts. "Those guys are great players. But history says that before I was injured, when my putting was solid, I could compete with anybody. This is exciting for me."

--Bill Fields

Great news out of Georgia today with the official announcement that the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf will be a two-man team event in 2008 contested for official money and counting as an official victory.

Expect between 35 and 42 duos playing in the better-ball Legends division April 25-27 at Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa, said Champions Tour president Rick George. "To make it a team format with official money and official win [status] is significant," George said this afternoon. "We've talked about making the change since 2003, and the last 16 months it was discussed a lot among our players. I think there will be more enthusiasm for the event now."

The Legends, of course, was the event that spawned the senior tour with exciting competitions in 1978 and 1979 at Onion Creek CC in Austin, Texas. It remained an unofficial team event through 1992, was an unofficial individual competition in 1993, and went back to being an unofficial better-ball event from 1994 through 2001 prior to becoming an individual event with official status in 2002.

In the end, the sponsor's desire to return to the tournament to its roots coupled with players' interest in a break from routine solo stroke play overruled concerns from some golfers that a team competition could tilt the money list unfairly.

The last couple of years, Tom Watson chose to play with old friend Andy North in the unofficial Rahael division that ended on Saturday. In 2007 Johnny Miller made a rare tournament appearance paired with Mike Reid.

"To me, it's a win-win situation," said Hall of Famer Larry Nelson, who expects to team with Jim Thorpe. "The sponsor has been wanting this and the players were ready for something different, too. This event is what made our tour, period."

--Bill Fields

Punching your ticket to the Champions Tour always has been tough. Last year it  got even tougher when Q school stopped awarding full one-year exemptions to the top eight finishers and replaced it with the right to qualify weekly for the top 30 finishers and ties. The same system is in place for this year's 72-hole qualifying tournament finals, which begin Tuesday at TPC Eagle Trace in Coral Springs, Fla.

Some familiar names are in the field -- including Kirk Hanefeld, Rick Karbowski, Rick Rhoden, John Ross, Harry Taylor, Roy Vucinich and Bruce Zabriski -- but I'm going to be paying attention to two players I met while covering the senior tour this season.

One is Frank Apodaca, who was a professional roller-derby skater for 27 years and works for a building supplies company in San Jose, Calif. When I blogged about Apodaca during the Wal-Mart First Tee Open, he gave me a great quote: "In golf you have to be mentally tough. In skating you just have to be tough."

The other golfer is Jim Woodward (above right), who jumped into contention at the U.S. Senior Open and was a hit with his engaging personality.

Lukewarm has to be the best review anyone has given the qualifying method begun with 2006 Q school, where the top 30 earn a chance to compete for up to nine slots at each tournament. "I don't know that it's been a failure," said Champions Tour president Rick George. "A lot of people have had an opportunity to compete. Has it been successful? I don't know that I would say it's been successful. It's somewhere in the middle."

In the middle of the pack is about the best any of the top-30 qualifiers from the '06 school did this past season. Bruce Vaughn was 44th on the money list, followed by Rod Spittle (53rd) and Mitch Adams (61st). Medalist Boonchu Ruangkit (72nd) was the only other player from Q school in the top 75 on the 2007 money list.

"We rarely go past 40th on [the prior year] money list [to fill tournaments]," said George, noting the reality facing the middle-rung money earners. "So how many events [Vaughn] would get into, I'm not sure. It's tough to become exempt out of this system. You almost have to win."

Expect a lot of talk about ditching the "new school" next season in advance of 2009 with something closer to the old one. In the meantime, this week's winners know what they're getting into. They will need some serious mental toughness -- and some seriously low rounds week-to-week to get a chance to play.

--Bill Fields
(Photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

SONOMA, Calif.  --  The Charles Schwab Cup Championship will be returning to Sonoma GC in 2008, and Champions Tour officials are talking with the club about a possible 2009 date before the event moves to San Francisco's Harding Park GC in 2010 for a two-year run.

If Jim Thorpe could vote with his wallet -- or his heart -- I know where he would want the tournament to be played in two years. Same for Loren Roberts.

Thorpe's victory Sunday, the first of 2007 for the 58-year-old, was his second consecutive and third in the seniors' season finale since it moved to northern California in 2003 after stints in Myrtle Beach and Oklahoma City. Yesterday's $442,000 check gives him $1,466,783 in five appearances at Sonoma. "It's a shame we can't play all 30 events here. I could probably be a multiple winner," Thorpe said with a laugh the other day.

As for Roberts, he claimed the season-long Schwab Cup points competition by maintaining the 165-point advantage over Jay Haas that he had when the week began. The outcome made up for the disappointment of last year, when the putting maestro three-putted the final green to allow Haas to seize the $1 million. Second place was still worth $500,000, but it really wasn't about the money.

"The dogfight that it was last year and for Jay to win it on the last hole -- for me to be able to come back and win it this year is huge for me," said Roberts.

Thorpe and Roberts are both throwbacks, reminders of how guys used to make their way into the game and that there is -- or at least, was -- more than one way to stick once you get there.

The son of a black greenskeeper in North Carolina, Thorpe caddied and learned to play by twilight, and he apprenticed in money games, not a developmental tour, honing an individualistic swing steered by a pair of the strongest and best hands in golf. If you want to see a big man with touch who does things his way, just take a look at Thorpe.

Roberts toiled as an assistant pro for years before making the PGA Tour, making up for an average long game without much pop with putting skill to rival anyone, anytime. Once he finally won, at the Nestle Invitational in 1994 when he was 38, he won again. Eight times in all.

Just like Thorpe, for Roberts turning 50 has been a passport to greater success. A senior major each of his first three seasons. Being No. 1, finally, this season with his Schwab bounty, of which charities near his home in Memphis are certain to benefit in the generous tradition of the cup's champions that began in 2001 with Allen Doyle.

Thorpe's success has meant he has been interviewed a lot in Sonoma over the past few years. Without fail, some of his lengthy press sessions meander from thoughts about his place as a minority in golf to the state of black youth today. He tends to shoot from the hip, but also from the heart.

"I joined the tour in 1975. We had 12, 13, 14 African-American players. This is a new millenium, and today we have nobody playing," Thorpe said. "Tiger is biracial, or whatever you want to call him, [but other than that] there is nobody."

Whatever hurdles Thorpe faced when he was young, he found a way to play and got hooked on the game's challenge as much as its payoffs. "If you play as long as we have, everything in golf is going to happen to you," he said. "You're going to three-putt from four feet. You're going to hit it out-of-bounds. You're going to shank a chip shot. You're going to get so nervous you can't swallow. And that's the beauty of it."

And there are tournaments such as the one Thorpe just put together, when the birdies come in bunches and there is no one better than you. That feeling doesn't get old, no matter the tour.

-- Bill Fields

(Photo: Marc Feldman/Getty Images)

SONOMA, Calif. -- By shooting a third-round 67, Brad Bryant pulled within a shot of leader Denis Watson (right) in the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Sonoma GC. More interestingly, Bryant positioned himself squarely in the middle of the season-long Schwab Cup points competition.

"Hopefully, we won't be worried about scenarios or anything else, and we'll just go play," Bryant said of the possible outcomes Sunday in the Schwab Cup race.

Last year's competition came down to the final green, with Jay Haas scoring a 20-point victory over Loren Roberts for the $1 million annuity. This time, in theory anyway, it could be much tighter.

Now, the chances of the tournament shaking out exactly like this might be only slightly less than the odds of winning Lotto, but it is fun to consider.

Roberts, T-18 after 54 holes, leads Haas, who is T-14, by 165 points in the Schwab race. Bryant, T-2 with Jim Thorpe after 54 holes, trails Roberts by 697 points. If he wins the tournament Sunday, and Roberts and Haas finish out of the top 10 and don't earn any points, he will win the Schwab Cup.

If Roberts finishes out of the top 10, then Haas has to place ninth or better to win the cup. If Roberts finishes 10th, Haas will have to finish fourth or better to win the cup for the second consecutive year.

The most intriguing plot? If Haas finishes solo fourth, Roberts solo eighth and Bryant wins the tournament tomorrow, Haas will claim the Schwab Cup with 2,905 points, Roberts will be second with 2,904 and Bryant will be third with 2,903.

"I've got to go out and think about shooting as low as I can tomorrow," said Roberts. "That's the only defense I have. I can't do anything about Brad winning the tournament or Jay beating me or anything else. I have to see if I can finish in the top 10 and go from there."

If Roberts and Haas are to control their own destiny Sunday, they will have to putt better. Roberts shot a nifty 31 on the incoming nine Saturday to salvage a 69, but it came after some un-Boss of the Moss like putting.

"I had five three-putts through 45 holes," Roberts said. "I don't usually have five three-putts in five months. These greens are very, very tricky. You have a 35- or 40-footer and you get the ball breaking just a little low of the hole, you've got some problems. You've really got to pay attention to what you're doing."

Haas has been no more pleased with his putting. "I have played pretty well from tee to green but have putted just atrociously this week," Haas said. "This was [my] best putting day today, and I made two putts outside of six feet. It's just disappointing. I have no touch. I'm trying all kinds of different things. This is not the time of the year, nor the greens, to be struggling on. The first day, I turned a 62 into a 68. It was a joke."

--Bill Fields
(Photo: Marc Feldman/Getty Images)

SONOMA, Calif. -- After this weekend, Ben Nelson can pay less attention to the weather forecast and more attention to his golf game.

After three years as tournament director for the Champions Tour, which came after a long run as a rules official on the PGA Tour, the 63-year-old Nelson is retiring to his native Mississippi with plenty of stories.

"I was coming back from the Hawaiian Open in 1994 on a charter plane with a bunch of players, and we landed in Los Angeles at 4:30 in the morning during the Northridge earthquake," Nelson said Saturday before the third round of the Charles Schwab Cup Championship. "Our plane hits the ground and the earthquake was going on. Everybody was scared to death. Luckily nothing happened to the plane. The sun came up, and we were  allowed in the terminal. The whole place was a mess, water coming out of the walls. We were real lucky."

While experiencing a 6.7 earthquake was out of the ordinary for Nelson, dealing with dodgy weather wasn't.

"I had a little heart problem a few years ago," Nelson said, "and my cardiologist told me to write down five things I could do to take stress out of my life. Two of the five were, 'Never go back to the International [near Denver].' That was the most stressful weather week every year. You could see the storms out there, and you knew they were coming. It was just a matter of what time they were going to hit. And the Memorial was no picnic, either. You pretty much knew it was going to rain there, too."

Nelson's career spanned a generation when golf took on a larger profile. "No question, TV became a bigger factor," he said, "especially with the Tiger phenomenon. If he was in the field, you were aware of how important it was to make television happy. You had to get as close as you could [to a scheduled finish time], because the networks were hounding you all the time. Somebody asked me once what my job was, and I said it was to have a winner on Sunday, hopefully at the right time."

One thing that hasn't changed, in Nelson's view, is the integrity of the players. "There's some inadvertent stuff [rules infractions], but I don't think anybody at this level knowingly cheats," Nelson said. "You hear rumors, but I just don't believe it. Not at this level. I believe they can't afford to. If they ever get caught, they're gone. These guys' reputations are more important than scores."

Nelson's reputation is simple: He is one of the gentlemen of the sport, and he will be missed.

--Bill Fields

SONOMA, Calif. -- Dinner would taste good for Denis Watson (right) Friday night. All he did Friday in the second round of the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Sonoma GC was birdie the last four holes to shoot a 64 and join Jim Thorpe within one stroke of Eduardo Romero's lead (at 12-under 132) after 36 holes.

It was another banner day in a sterling season for Watson, who won the Senior PGA Championship in May and the Boeing Classic in August, amazing stuff for a talented pro who was riddled with injuries for so much of his career. After so much frustration, so many valleys, to be in contention again is what it's all about for Watson.

"That's what you live for -- that's where you want to be," Watson said. "These guys like Jay [Haas] and Loren [Roberts], they're contending every week, they get familiar with it and that's fun. Playing in the middle of the field sucks. When you're in the heat and in the hunt, that's the test. You want to see if you can pass the test every time. Sometimes you screw up, sometimes you play well."

Watson wasn't the only golfer to light it up in the second round. Naomichi (Joe) Ozaki shot a 65 to move into a fourth-place tie with Tom Purtzer and Brad Bryant at 9 under. Among the tidbits revealed in his post-round interview, through his caddie/interpreter, was how he ended up with his plain, old nickname. After all, one of his golfing brothers is Masashi (Jumbo) Ozaki, and another is Tateo (Jet) Ozaki.

The prime aviation terms having been taken, it was out of his hands. "The fans were able to vote in on what they wanted to call me," he said, "and Joe is what won."

Whoever ends up winning the seniors' season-ending event could use some putts over the weekend such as the one James Haugh, Ben Crenshaw's caddie, struck late Friday afternoon on the practice putting green in a contest with his boss. From 40 feet, downhill with a subtle break, on his first attempt, using Crenshaw's driver, Haugh was golden.

Then it was Crenshaw's turn. Using the simple blade putter that is the antithesis of high-tech but in his hands is the epitome of high style, Crenshaw took a couple of looks, made the stroke that has broken hearts for four decades and sank his first effort. Nothing to it.   

--Bill Fields
(Photo: Marc Feldman/Getty Images)

SONOMA, Calif.--It's impossible to watch Tom Watson in action at Sonoma G.C., in the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, and not think of his late friend and caddie, Bruce Edwards (right). Stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Edwards was able to work for the last time at the 2003 Schwab Cup Championship. The progressive neurodegenerative disease took his life April 8, 2004. He was 49.

Watson has worked hard since Edwards' death, doing what he can to support research for a cure for ALS, a fatal disease that usually claims its victims three to five years after diagnosis. He remains heavily involved with Driving for Life, a fund-raising organization, but admits that medical progress has been slow in coming.

"Nothing of significance has come from any  drug trial with ALS," Watson said this week, "significance meaning a 7 percent reduction in the progression of the disease. Nothing. Zero. Nada."

Watson mentioned one study in which researchers hope they have discovered a protein that could lead to a vaccine to thwart an inherited form of ALS that accounts for about 10 percent of ALS cases. "All we've got is hope," Watson said. "We've never had anything more than hope with this thing. There's nothing out there. There's not a single thing that will stop the progression of the disease. You get it, and you're going to die. We're all going to die, but you get this stuff and you're going to die quick, within three to five years. With Bruce, it was a year and a half."

--Bill Fields
(Photo: Jonathan Edwards/Getty Images) 

SONOMA, Calif.--Pars don't figure to cut it this week at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Sonoma Golf Club.

"The course is playing very soft," said Tom Watson, who won here in 2005 on the strength of a final-round 64. "The greens are soft, the fairways are soft. The rough is tough, but the greens aren't hard. It's going to be a very low-scoring tournament."

The seniors' season-ender has been a low-scoring tournament since it settled here in 2003 after stints in Oklahoma City and Myrtle Beach. Jim Thorpe won with a 20-under 268 in 2003 and was 17 under when he won last year. Mark McNulty was 11 under when he won in 2004, and Watson won at 16 under.

"The golf course today was very, very scoreable," Loren Roberts said after his pro-am round. "I think you've got to be 4- or 5-under every day [to win] unless conditions change drastically."

The pristine conditions of the putting surfaces will help Roberts--and the rest of the 29-player field--go low. "They might be the best greens we play on tour," Roberts said. "They're fast. They're smooth. I like that."

Roberts enters the week with a 165-point margin over Jay Haas in the Schwab Cup season-long points competition, which he narrowly lost to Haas in 2006. Tom Watson (684 points behind) and Brad Bryant (697 behind) are the only other players with a mathematical chance to claim the $1 million annuity.

"I want to focus on winning the golf tournament," Roberts said. "I don't want to get caught up with trying to play Jay. I need to concentrate on winning the tournament."

While Mark O'Meara (13th on the money list) qualified but is playing in an event overseas instead, several other senior mainstays are absent after having failed to finish in the top 30. Allen Doyle and Tom Jenkins aren't here after playing eight straight Schwab championships each, Morris Hatalsky is absent after five straight appearances and Craig Stadler is missing his first after four consecutive starts here.

--Bill Fields

SONOMA, Calif.--Scott Simpson hit practice putts Wednesday after his pro-am round in the Charles Schwab Cup Championship. It was an idyllic afternoon, far from the harrowing conditions that caused the 1987 U.S. Open champion to flee his house Monday as a fire threatened his neighborhood in Poway, Calif.

"It's the Witch Creek fire," Simpson said. "It probably got within a quarter-mile of us. It burned a lot of houses in Poway and Rancho Bernardo, which is right where we live. Four years ago a fire got within about a mile from us, but we weren't really in danger. This one is a lot different--this one burned a lot of houses near us."

Simpson and his wife, Cheryl, had not yet been told to evacuate when they drove a short distance to take a look at the encroaching blaze. "We saw smoke getting closer and closer, and we spoke with some cops who asked us where we lived," Simpson said. "When we told them just up the street, they said we better evacuate."

The Simpsons' hasty retreat meant few things came with them. "We got the computer and photo albums, and my wife thought to get the U.S. Open trophy, then we left," Simpson said. "Then we thought about all the things we should have gotten: passports and watches, other valuables. I think [the house] is going to be OK unless something weird happens. I've heard they've got National Guard [troops] with M-16s all around the neighborhood. Our security system just went up. It puts your house in perspective. Like my wife said, it's only a house."

--Bill Fields

Hubert Green and Curtis Strange gave wide-ranging interviews yesterday on the occasion of their Nov. 12 induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame. I was traveling to the Charles Schwab Cup Championship and missed the teleconferences, but enjoyed reading the interview transcripts this morning.

One of the best parts was Green's recollection of having had Hugh Durham, the longtime college basketball coach who won 633 career games, as his golf coach at Florida State. "Coach Durham, I can't say enough good about him," said Green. "If anybody could sell saltwater to the Pacific Ocean, it would be Hugh Durham. He knew nothing about golf when he had the golf coaching job.  But he knew enough about coaching to to make it interesting for us and make us work for it."

Durham improvised well, according to Green, especially when it came to the Seminoles' practice rounds on the university's nine-hole course. The rough on the left side of even-numbered holes would out-of-bounds, and the right rough would be O.B. on the odd-numbered holes.

"You get on a par 5 and miss the green by three feet and you're out-of-bounds," Green recalled. "We didn't like [his tactics] at the time, but looking back, it was very smart."

Strange also paid tribute to his college coach at Wake Forest, one of the best ever. "If it wasn't for Jesse Haddock and Wake Forest, I wouldn't be talking to you today," Strange said. "I might have been on tour for 30 years not going to Wake Forest, but it would have been different. I owe him a great deal."

--Bill Fields

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- The idyllic setting along the Monterey Peninsula contrasts starkly with the rough-and-tumble world formerly occupied by one of the senior pros in the field at the Wal-Mart First Tee Open.

Frank Apodaca, who shot a 66 to lead seven qualifiers into the tournament, was a professional roller-derby skater for 27 years with the most famous team in the sport, the Bay City Bombers. 

"Lot of broken ribs and busted fingers from hanging on to collars and jerseys," Apodoca said Saturday after his second round. "I was a pivot skater. I'd be in the back blocking people to stop them from scoring. It was hard on the elbows."

Apodaca is 51, and he tried to qualify for the Champions Tour last year but missed by a couple of shots. He plans to give it another try this fall. In the meantime, he works in as many mini-tour appearances as his job with a building supplies company in San Jose, Calif., will allow. Two decades ago, he played in the Los Angeles and San Diego PGA Tour stops.

Apodaca retired from skating four years ago and admits there isn't much similarity between his two sports. "In golf you have to be mentally tough," he said. "In skating you just have to be tough."

-- Bill Fields

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- The loop and the laughs. When informed of the death of Gay Brewer Jr. -- who passed away Friday at 75 after battling lung cancer since 2006 -- players at the Wal-Mart First Tee Open recalled each with equal fondness. Brewer could really play, and he could really tell a story.

Brewer, whose 1967 Masters title highlighted a long career on the PGA and Champions tours -- with 10 wins, and another as a senior -- was part of a generation whose swings tended to be as distinctive as their personalities.

"All those guys could play golf, but their personalities emerged, too," said three-time U.S. Open champion Hale Irwin. "Gay was one of those guys. Everybody liked him. He showed that you didn't have to have a perfect golf swing to have excellence in your game. I would tell some of the juniors here this week to look at how Gay and other great players of years ago did it their way."

Brewer's handsy swing, in which the club wandered around unconventionally, had been with him from his formative years in Lexington, Ky. As he recalled to pgatour.com's Lauren Deason earlier this summer, his swing didn't inspire confidence at first sight.

"I'll never forget the time that my high school coach, Dr. H.L. Davis, watched me hit balls when I went out for the golf team," Brewer told the website. "After he saw the loop in my swing, he didn't think I was good enough. He took me over to a par 3 and I proceeded to hit three balls all within six feet of the hole. He told me I was on the team."

"It was a buggy whip from the get-go," Irwin said. "He had real loose hands, but he got the club back to the ball the same way every time."

Ben Crenshaw, who enjoyed Brewer's humor for many years at the Masters Champions dinner, said Brewer "was a very artful player with the most talented hands I've ever seen."

Brewer's Masters title came a year after he three-putted the 72nd hole and, along with Tommy Jacobs, lost an 18-hole playoff with with Jack Nicklaus. Brewer had one last highlight-reel moment at Augusta National in 1998 when he was 66, fashioning an even-par 72 in windy conditions in the first round. At the time he was the oldest Masters participant to shoot par or better in the tournament.

In June Picadome golf course in Lexington, where Brewer learned the game, was renamed The Gay Brewer Jr. course at Picadome in honor of one of the finest golfers produced by the Bluegrass State.

--Bill Fields

(Photo: Andrew Reddington/Getty Images)

SUNRIVER, Ore. -- You have to give Mark McNulty a lot of credit for how he won the Jeld-Wen Tradition Sunday. When you birdie four of the first seven holes in the final round to take control, that's pretty strong, especially when you haven't lurked on any leader boards all season. McNulty, whose sunglasses and heavy coating of zinc oxide on his lips liken him to a middle-aged lifeguard who has wandered off the beach, is a tidy player and softspoken, classy fellow.

One man's gain, however, was one tournament's loss, as far as the drama quotient was concerned in its first playing at Crosswater Club at Sunriver Resort. The Tradition has had some interesting finishes in its lifetime -- from its Jack Nicklaus-dominated early years in Arizona to the Loren Roberts-Dana Quigley playoff two years ago outside Portland -- but this wasn't one of them.

McNulty's strong final-round start was too much for anybody to overcome, from unheralded David Edwards, who held on to finish second, to consistent senior performer D.A. Weibring, who took third place, or Tom Watson, who gave the event some star power but faded to a closing 74 and T-6. You can't blame McNulty, who would've won by seven if not for a meaningless double-bogey on the 72nd hole, but the back nine on Sunday was a snooze.

The Tradition is one of the senior "majors," although it doesn't really feel like one. A good tournament, and good fun for spectators and corporate clients who come out on site? Sure, like most of the stops on the Champions Tour, it is. The event seemed to have a bit of traction in its first year in central Oregon, with somewhat larger galleries. But as in Arizona, once Nicklaus aged out, and on the Oregon coast, the Tradition pretty much feels like a regular tournament, as does the Senior Players Championship, which will round out the slate of senior majors this fall at a new site, Baltimore CC, under the sponsorship of Constellation Energy.

Why not enliven one of these events by switching the format to match play? Maybe you would end up with two journeymen in the final, but you could get the two best seniors squaring off. It's worthy taking a shot, because it would be different. Indications are that the 2008 Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf will revert to the team format that heralded the start of the senior tour, a move that makes so much common sense that it is hard to believe it took so long for it to happen. A match-play Tradition ought to be similarly considered.

--Bill Fields

SUNRIVER, Ore. -- Many of the players at the Jeld-Wen Tradition were headed for Seattle Sunday night for the next Champions Tour event, the Boeing Championship. Not Fred Funk. After his 11th-place finish at the Tradition, the 51-year-old was bound for New York and The Barclays, the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs on the PGA Tour.

"It's great that I'm in it, but it's been a frustrating year with my [bad] back and all," said Funk. "I had a great start [with a win on the senior and regular tours], but haven't done much since."

Funk enters the FedEx playoffs in 73rd position. "I'm in the first two events for sure. My goal is to make it to all four, but at least to the third one in Chicago." Funk expressed little surprise that Tiger Woods is skipping the first playoff event. "Any tournament, you want him in the field," Funk said, "but we also understand the problem with the concept is asking these guys to play an awful lot of weeks in a row. Tiger gears up stronger mentally and physically than anybody else. He just doesn't like playing that many weeks in a row. He's sticking to his guns and sticking to his schedule."

Funk is cautiously optimistic about what the playoffs will bring, in terms of fan interest. "We're trying to create something that creates excitement," he said. "If it works, great. If not, then we'll probably have to re-tweak. We're still going up against football."

Regardless of how Funk fares in the coming month, he still is in decent shape to qualify for the Champions Tour's season-ending event for the top-30 money winners, the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in late October. He left central Oregon 28th in earnings even though he has played only five times this year while playing a full PGA Tour schedule in hopes of making the U.S. Presidents Cup team, a goal that didn't pan out.

--Bill Fields

(Photo: Harry How/Getty Images)

SUNRIVER, Ore. -- Once a great putter, always a great putter. Or so reasons Mark McNulty, one of the best, who rode a hot flatstick to a runaway victory Sunday in the Jeld-Wen Tradition, the fourth of five majors on the Champions Tour schedule.

"Guys w