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Thursday, January 20, 2000
‘Rookie’ Watson
joins elite senior
field at MasterCard
He says it'll be fun
By Bill Kwon
Star-BulletinIf Tom Watson liked coming here for the Hawaiian Open, he's now going to love coming to the islands.
When local golf fans last saw Watson, he finished second to John Huston in the 1998 Hawaiian Open. He also had five top-10 finishes, including two thirds.
Watson made it a point of saying that he played that year because he thought it might have been the last one at Waialae.
He's someone with a sense of golf history. Since then, Watson has turned 50 and starts as a rookie on the Senior PGA Tour, which opens its 2000 season tomorrow at the Hualalai Resort on the Big Island with the MasterCard Championship.
Watson joined the 38-player field by winning the Bank One Championship in Dallas in only his second event after his 50th birthday on Sept. 4.
This year's MasterCard field - the largest in the event's 15-year history - is made up of 1998 and 1999 Senior Tour winners and those winning a Senior major championship in the last five years.
He will also join Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player in the Senior Skins Game next week at the Mauna Lani Bay Resort.
Watson didn't play particularly well in his Senior Tour debut the week before and was glad he won at Dallas.
"It made for a very nice beginning of the year with two weeks here in Hawaii," Watson said.
Watson is looking forward to playing a full schedule on the Senior Tour this year with the attitude of going out and winning.
"There's no question I will have a little more fun out on this tour and joke around a little," he said.
"But it's still serious business to the players who are in the lead. It hasn't changed from the regular tour. I look forward to winning a few times on the Senior Tour this year."
While the interest this weekend will be on "The Rookie" Watson and Jack Nicklaus, don't count out defending champion John Jacobs, who shot a course-record tying 64 in the opening round to post a wire-to-wire, three-stroke victory over Jim Colbert and Ray Floyd with a 54-hole total of 203 (13-under-par).
Or also, 1999 Senior Tour rookie and Player of the Year Bruce Fleisher, and Hale Irwin, who won the Senior Tour money titles in 1997 and '98 before being unseated by Fleisher, the first rookie to win the money crown since Lee Trevino in 1990.
Besides Jacobs, Irwin, who also won at Hualalai, and Nicklaus (1995), two other players here have also won the event before - George Archer in 1990 and Colbert in 1995.
Seniors tee off!
What: MasterCard Championship.
