When Craig Stadler and Mark Wiebe made their way into contention last weekend at the Legends of Golf team tournament, it might have caught some Colorado golf fans a little by surprise.
After all, the local contingent on the major professional tours hasn’t exactly distinguished itself in the first third of 2009. In fact, based on top finishes in non-team events, this has been the poorest start to a season collectively for tour players with strong Colorado ties in 30 to 40 years.
Stadler and teammate Jeff Sluman lost in a playoff at the Legends of Golf, while Wiebe and partner Loren Roberts tied for third. But while the money earned at the tournament was official for the Champions Tour money list, the Legends of Golf is a team event and thus falls into a different category than your typical tour stop.
Looking strictly at non-team tournaments on the three major tours in the U.S. (PGA, LPGA and Champions), there’s been a grand total of one top-10 finish by a local player in 2009, and zero top-fives. That’s far from the norm for the Colorado contingent, which included a dozen regular competitors during the first four months of the year.
The only individual top-10 showing by a local player so far is the eighth-place by Colorado Springs native R.W. Eaks at the Champions Tour’s Cap Cana Championship in late March.
In comparison, a look back at the first four months of each year since 1980 — as far back as any of the tours provide tournament-by-tournament results of players online — reveals local tour players have never had so few top finishes by April 30.
With tour players with strong Colorado ties such as Hale Irwin, Steve Jones, Dale Douglass, Jonathan Kaye, Jill McGill, Stadler and Wiebe, more often than not at least one local competitor has won a tournament by the end of April. But in each case from 1980 on, there’s been at least one individual finish better than Eaks’ eighth-place this year. And given that Irwin was one of the top players in the world through the 1970s, it’s likely that this year marks the least top finishes by local players since the 1960s.
Here’s the tour-by-tour rundown of the best finishes by local players so far in 2009:
— PGA Tour: Kent Denver High School graduate Kevin Stadler posted the only top-20 showing by a local player this year when he placed 14th at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in February.
— LPGA Tour: Denver native and Cherry Creek High School graduate McGill broke out of a big slump to finish 14th at the Corona Championship last week. It marked the only top-60 performance by a local on the LPGA Tour this year.
— Champions Tour: Eaks’ eighth-place showing at the Cap Cana is the only time a local has cracked the top 10 in a non-team tournament.
As for the outlook for the rest of “˜09, let’s just hope local tour players simply are taking a little longer than usual to get warmed this year.
