By D. A. Weibring
This week the Champions Tour moves to the west coast for two events. The first week is the Toshiba Classic in Newport Beach, California, just south of Los Angeles. The following week we move up north to Valencia for the AT&T Classic.
Traditionally, these events on the west coast have drawn very good crowds with lots of enthusiasm for the Champions Tour. The golf course at Newport Beach Country Club reminds me of the ones we used to play in Palm Springs for the Bob Hope Desert Classic. It's a relatively short and tight golf course with smallish greens making for some challenging golf. We're projected to have a very good week of weather, but if the wind comes up, being close to the coastline, it can be very challenging. If the wind stays down and the weather turns warm toward the weekend, the guys could go low.
So far for the year, I'm relatively pleased with my playing. I've played five events and had four top-10's. Maybe I should go to Vegas since in three of those events I tied for seventh. I've really played pretty well and I look forward to the California bent grass greens. They're a little different than the mid-western or a northern or even an eastern bent grass, however I'm still looking forward to playing on greens that are more like the ones I grew up on, even though coastal greens tend to be a little bumpy. I'm hoping to continue to play well and keep moving up.
So far, I think the highlights of the Champions Tour is that we've had some terrific players like Nick Price, and Mark O'Meara join the Tour, and Seve Ballesteros will be joining us next month. One of the really interesting stories this year is the great play of Fred Funk. Fred turned 50 last summer and played steady in a couple of majors, but he didn't finish in the top 10; then he won our last regular event of the year in San Antonio. He got off to a slow this year at our Tournament of Champions event in Hawaii and finished off the pace. Then he decided to play one more week at the Turtle Bay event and blew the field away. He used that win as a confidence builder for the regular Tour and two weeks ago, he won in Mexico. I think he's the third player in history to win on the regular tour and the Champions Tour in the same year. Raymond Floyd and Craig Stadler did it a few years ago, and now Fred has joined them.
When he was asked if he would continue to play on the regular tour, he said, " I had to play just as hard to win on the Champions Tour as I did on the PGA Tour."
We're all proud of Fred and how well he's played. He's back on the Champions Tour enjoying the atmosphere and the interaction with the players, with our Pro-Am partners and all of the drawing parties and awards dinners. That's the hallmark of the Champions Tour; we're always trying to make sure that our sponsors, our pro-am supporters, have a good time.
In some ways the regular tour has gotten away from that because the money has grown so big. But we're trying to get back to those core values, and I think Fred experienced that and is really enjoying himself. And, apparently that's done a lot for his game, because he's a two-time winner on both tours so far in 2007.
