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Kite takes
another shot
at PGA Tour

The 54-year-old, a Champions
Tour regular, will play more
against the youngsters this year

When Tom Kite joined the PGA Tour in 1972, Roger Staubach was the MVP of Super Bowl VI, Jerry West led the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA title and Roberto Clemente collected his 3,000th hit.

Ain't none of them making no comeback.

There will be those who say a 54-year-old man capable of competing with kids half his age is the beauty of golf. There are few sports on the professional level where father can compete with son or mother with daughter. It's part of the appeal for dragging the clubs out of the garage no matter how long they've been collecting dust.

Kite dusted off his PGA Tour card and went and got another one thanks to the one-time free pass that accompanies being ranked in the Top 50 on the PGA Tour career money list.

"I was on the driving range at the third round of the (U.S. Open) and I was talking to (golf instructor) Bob Rotella and I was telling him what a great time I was having here," Kite said. "He said, 'Well, you ought to come out and play more out here.' I said, 'Well, my exemption at the U.S. Open ran out last year.' And he looked at me and said, 'What about the career 50?' "

There was a time when Kite was king of the world, when his name was at the top of golf's Forbes-like list. These days, Kite is 44th and dropping so fast, he'll be lucky to be in the top 100 by the time he's 60. But if not for the suggestion at last year's U.S. Open, where he tied for 57th, Kite might have missed this golden opportunity.

"I had not even thought about it," Kite conceded. "It was a regulation in there that I knew of. As soon as he (Rotella) mentioned it, it was kind of like yeah, I'm exempt."

Fans of the longtime Texan are the beneficiaries of this likely farewell tour that began today in the first round of the $4.8 million Sony Open in Hawaii. He and Ben Crenshaw burst on the scene after both helped the University of Texas golf team win the national championship. While Crenshaw was blessed with phenomenal skills on the putting surface, Kite had to swing a little harder for his living. The work ethic proved beneficial in a big way.

Much as it is for world No. 1 Vijay Singh, a bucket of golf balls at the driving range is only a little warm-up for the task at hand. The result for Kite is $10,937,613 in career earnings. Singh pocketed about $32,000 less with nine victories last year.

"You miss it," Kite said of golf's biggest stage. "I mean, if you've ever played in the big leagues, that's where you want to play. Hey, you may not be capable of it and I don't know that I'm capable of it -- we're going to find out over the next couple of months where I am -- but this is the tour everyone wants to play on."

It has changed considerably since Kite was named tour rookie of the year in 1973 with $54,270 in earnings. He would go on to win 19 career PGA Tour events, including the U.S. Open in 1992 and the Players Championship in 1989, often regarded as a fifth major. Kite finished first on tour in earnings in 1981 with $375,699. He won one title, but finished in the top 10 of a grinding 21 out of 24 tournaments.

But even familiar stages such as the Waialae Country Club have changed since Kite came through here a decade before. What was once a par 72 is now 70, with inviting par 5s transforming into nasty par 4s.

"It's playing really long now because they have not cut the fairways because of all the rain," Kite said. "So even the guys who are familiar with it are talking about how long the golf course is playing. There are some tees that are now back in the other fairways.

"You know, where you have a fairway that backs up to the hole and the tee is in the middle of the fairway. I'm sure I'll see that at a lot of golf courses. I'm really taking a wait-and-see attitude to see how everything goes, but I'm pleased with how I'm playing."

Kite goes to the Big Island from here to play in the MasterCard on the Champions Tour. He will then go back and forth on both tours, cherry-picking events that give him the opportunity to have the most success. If he did finish among the top 125 golfers by year's end, he would be exempt for 2006.

"There's part of me that has those expectations," Kite said. "But at the same time, I'm a little bit more realistic about the thing, too. I'm expecting to do reasonably well. I don't know what that is yet. I'm just kind of feeling my way."