Among them, they’ve won 35 times on the PGA Tour, another 56 on the Champions circuit, and they own four major championship titles.
There is a reason Hale Irwin, Craig Stadler and Mark Wiebe — three players with strong Colorado ties — are in the limited field for this weekend’s Mitsubushi Electric Championship on the Big Island of Hawaii.
The event, which runs Friday through Sunday (Jan. 18-20) marks the season opener for the 26-tournament Champions Tour schedule in 2013. The MEC is restricted to winners on the Champions Tour the last two seasons, senior major champions since 2008, and several sponsor exemptions (all with at least 15 career victories, including a minimum of one major title).
Irwin (pictured), the former University of Colorado athlete who grew up in Boulder, has become a fixture at this event. He’s playing in the tournament for a record 18th consecutive time, he’s won it twice (1997 and 2007), he remains the oldest champion in tournament history (61 years, 7 months in ’07), and he’s the oldest player in the field this week, at age 67.
The three-time U.S. Open champion, who’s beginning his 46th season as a tour pro, also has quite a history in Hawaii. Irwin has won nine official tour events in the state, including eight as a Champions Tour player.
When the World Golf Hall of Famer prevailed in what was then known as the MasterCard Championship in 2007 — he used a 10-under-par 62 in the second round en route to winning by five strokes — it was the last of his record 45 Champions Tour victories. That’s 16 more wins than the No. 2 player on the Champions win list, Lee Trevino.
And it’s not as if Irwin is now just a ceremonial golfer. He finished 37th on the 2012 Champions Tour money list after placing 27th in 2011. And last spring, he ended up third in the Senior PGA Championship, one of the Champions Tour majors.
As for Stadler, the 1982 Masters champion will be making his eighth appearance in the Champions season opener. The Evergreen resident, 59, has won eight times on the Champions circuit, but the last of those was in 2004, when he posted five victories.
Wiebe, who like Irwin is a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, has been a model of consistency in his Champions Tour career, which includes three wins. In each of his first five full seasons on the circuit, Wiebe has finished in the top 30 on the season-long money list. He ended up 23rd in 2012.
