It’s a Grand Slam leaderboard halfway through the Senior PGA Championship at Colorado Golf Club in Parker.
There are winners of the Masters (Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer), the U.S. Open (Tom Kite and Scott Simpson), the British Open (Nick Price and Tom Lehman) and the PGA Championship (Price).
That’s some major success story.
“I don’t think you’re surprised to see those names up there, are you?” asked Kite, who’s shot back-to-back 69s. “I don’t think anybody is. “¦ When you get on a golf course that’s difficult like this, and under the conditions that are tough like this, you’re going to see a lot of the “˜name’ players up there.
“They get to be name players because they’re a little bit better than everybody else and they win more tournaments than everybody else and then they get under tough conditions and they perform better.”
Couples, winner of three of his six Champions Tour starts, grabbed the Senior PGA lead Friday with a 4-under-par 68 that left him at 7-under 137 overall. On his heels are the 60-year-old Kite (second, 138), Lehman (third, 139), Langer (sixth, 141), Price (sixth, 141) and Simpson (12th, 143).
Of that group, Kite, Langer and Price are already in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
“It’s a great leaderboard, that’s for sure,” Couples said. “There are a lot of good players.” As Lehman noted after shooting 71 Friday, “It feels like a major.”
One of the reasons is that, despite the quality of players on top, no one is ripping up the course. The best score in the second round, when winds continued to be a problem, was Couples’ 68.
“It’s hard and it’s long,” he said of Colorado Golf Club. “I’m sure if it’s long for me it’s long for a lot of other people. It’s a good test, but I can tell you this course is hard. As far as hard, it’s a 10.”
The 81 players who shot 7 over par or better for two rounds qualified for the weekend. Among those falling short were two-time major winners Andy North (154) and Sandy Lyle (154).
Meanwhile, Couples, the Champions Tour rookie and fan favorite, established himself as the man to beat, as he has been ever since he turned 50 in October.
On Friday, despite playing in the windier afternoon conditions, Freddie the Fantastic racked up seven birdies, offset by three bogeys, to post the round of the day. He shot 68 despite a bogey on the final hole, where he took an unplayable lie after an errant tee shot.
Through two rounds, Couples has built his lead primarily on five holes (1, 7, 8, 14 and 16), playing those holes in 11 under par. Overall, he’s driven the ball accurately and been deadly on the greens.
“I’ve putted really well for two days and made a lot of birdies,” he said. “That’s the reason I’m 7 under.”
“¢MIRACLES HAPPEN FOR IRWIN: There are only three tournaments on the Champions Tour — the Senior PGA Championship, U.S. Senior Open and the Senior British Open — in which the field is cut after 36 holes. That helps explain why a very successful player such as Hale Irwin has missed just two cuts in almost 15 years on the circuit.
The former University of Colorado athlete almost made it No. 3 on Friday when he backed up a first-round 76 with a 74 for a 6-over-par 150 total.
When Irwin finished about 1:30 p.m., he said “If I make the cut it’ll be a miracle, an absolute miracle.”
Not very long after, the miraculous did happen as scores went up as the afternoon wore on. So, with a stroke to spare actually, the career leader in Champions Tour victories will be around for the weekend in his former home state.
“It hasn’t been a good couple of days,” said Irwin, who will turn 65 on Thursday. “It’s not that I’m playing that badly, but I’m just not playing well enough. There are too many mental mistakes out there. “¦ There are so many wasted shots from 80 yards in, it’s crazy.”
When noting his impending birthday and acknowledging his problems scoring, Irwin joked, “Shooting my age — I have to get older quicker to get to that.”
“¢FOR LOEFFLER, PENTHOUSE TO THE “¦: Bill Loeffler, who was flying high in the first round of the Senior PGA, came back down to earth in a hurry on Friday. The club pro who lives in Castle Rock was tied for fifth at 69 after Thursday, but shot a 10-over-par 82 in the second round. Fortunately for the three-time Colorado Open champion, he still managed to qualify for the weekend, albeit right on the number.
Loeffler played his last dozen holes in 10 over par on Friday, making a triple bogey and a double bogey during that stretch.
“All of a sudden my timing or something got off,” he said. “I was just horrible on the greens. It was just awful. That putter is headed to the dungeon, the dark dungeon, solitary confinement.”
Asked if he was stunned by going from the leaderboard to nearly missing the cut, Loeffler said, “I hit it so well (Thursday), I felt I may have turned a corner, but the minute you think you’ve got it, that’s when you know you’re dead.”
“¢COLORADO ROUNDUP: Along with Irwin and Loeffler, club pro Ron Vlosich of Lakewood snuck in to make the cut on the number (75-76–151). Here are how other players with strong Colorado ties fared through two rounds: Gary Hallberg of Castle Rock 71-75–146 (22nd place), Mark Wiebe of Aurora 77-77–154 (missed cut), David Arbuckle of Colorado Springs 75-79–154 (missed cut), Mike Zaremba of Pueblo 75-81–156 (missed cut), Colorado Springs native R.W. Eaks 74-82–156 (missed cut), Doug Perry of Fort Collins 83-85–168 (missed cut) and Dale Douglass of Castle Rock 81-91–172 (missed cut).
“¢SIXTEEN OF 18 ISN’T BAD: Tom Kite said Friday that overall he likes the work fellow Texan Ben Crenshaw did in designing Colorado Golf Club, but that doesn’t mean he’s a fan of all 18 holes.
“Apart from two holes I think (it) is a really fantastic golf course,” said Kite, a course designer himself. But Kite believes the green on the short par-3 second hole is too severe and said he doesn’t “understand that green complex at all” on the par-5 16th. “¦ “Assuming they get the financial situation here with the club straightened out, I’m sure (Crenshaw) will get the opportunity to come back in and (make) those subtle adjustments and get them right.”
“¢QUOTABLE: Kite, on an advantage the Champions Tour has over the PGA and LPGA Tours: “There’s a lot of enthusiasm right now because you’ve got a lot of name players that have popped out that are Hall of Famers or will be Hall of Famers that are all of a sudden playing on the Champions Tour. And when you’ve got a lot of young guys on the PGA Tour that you can’t put a face to a name a lot of times, and the same situation on the LPGA, the Champions Tour is a wonderful, wonderful tour where you can sit there and recognize most of the people in the tournament.”
“¢CHIP SHOTS: Among the caddies working for Senior PGA Championship competitors this week was former Colorado State University men’s golf coach Mark Crabtree, now the University of Louisville coach. Crabtree, who is finishing out his term as president of the Golf Coaches Association of America, was caddying for Ted Schulz, a resident of Louisville, Ky., before he missing the cut (76-78–154) “¦ Two more players withdrew Thursday night or Friday morning — Fuzzy Zoeller, the 2002 Senior PGA champion, after nine holes of the second round with a swollen finger (he was 5 over par at the time), and Rod Spittle on Thursday night after learning his father had passed away. “¦ Despite being 67 years old, Tom Wargo has made the cut in the last three Senior PGA Championships.
