TOUR Insider: Frys.com Open  PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent Get hot. Go low. Stay cool. These contrary instructions apply with equal import at this week's Frys.com Open benefiting Shriners Hospitals for Children in steamy Las Vegas, where scoring is likely to migrate in reverse proportion to the desert temperatures.  No. 18 at TPC Summerlin (Craig/PGA TOUR)
On the heels of a Texas shootout comes a Las Vegas showdown at the all-you-can-beat buffet. The menu is birdies. Go back for seconds. Yep, this stands to be another week when pars won't get you very far. Pars are the proverbial knives in a gunfight. In this roulette game, you have no choice but to bet on the red numbers. The TPC Summerlin (par 72, 7,243 yards) and TPC The Canyons (par 71, 7,063 yards) are the venues again with the former, designed by Bobby Weed and inaugural winner Fuzzy Zoeller, serving again as the host site. TPC Summerlin has been in the rotation since 1993, while TPC The Canyons joined in 2001. Though each course presents its share of peril, they still get roasted in more ways than one, unless some desert winds kick up. Troy Matteson last year became the seventh winner in a row to shoot four rounds in the 60s when he beat Daniel Chopra and Ben Crane by a stroke. Just four of 85 players who made the cut last year failed to break par for 72 holes. Players who got to double digits under par were rewarded with a mere tie for 51st. Averaging 68 per day didn't even get a player into the top 10. Ouch. Hey, it's hard when it's easy. Worth knowing: Mike Weir and Scott Verplank, unbeaten for their respective teams in the Presidents Cup, will be seeing their first action since the U.S. victory in Montreal. Charles Howell III of the U.S. squad also is in the field. Weir is competing for the first time since 2000, when he finished a career-high 12th. Verplank is making his 17th appearance and 10th in a row, a streak that includes three finishes of seventh or better. Howell placed fifth just two years ago. Maybe this will be Weir's week to break through for his first win since 2004, seeing how the Fall Series is having a reviving effect for some guys used to winning a bit who had hit a dry spell. The previous two champions in the Fall Series, Justin Leonard and Chad Campbell, had posted two and one top-10, respectively, this year before getting back to the winner's circle. Weir has two top-10s this year, his last coming at the British Open. Mark Brooks is back to try it again at the Frys.com Open. The former PGA champion has competed every year since the 1984 edition, giving Brooks his 24th straight start in the event this week, most in the field. His best finish, though, is a tie for 14th in 1994.  Troy Matteson won in 2006. (Feldman/WireImage)
Only six former champions are teeing it up at the Frys.com Open. The oldest of the group is Bob Tway, who in 1990 beat John Cook in a playoff. The others are Bill Glasson, Billy Andrade, Bob Estes, Phil Tataurangi and defending champ Troy Matteson. Cook, by the way, who triumphed in Vegas in '92, turned 50 on Oct. 2 and is making his Champions Tour debut at the Administaff Small Business Classic in Spring, Texas. He is one of six former Frys.com Open champs competing on the senior circuit this week. Matteson is one of six men to make the Frys.com Open his first PGA TOUR victory. All six have come since Jim Furyk broke through in 1995. Tiger Woods followed in '96 followed by Tataurangi in 2002, Andre Stolz ('04) and West Short ('05). It looks as if Ben Crane might be ready to test his chronically bad back at the Frys.com Open, where he tied for second last year. Crane hasn't competed since the EDS Byron Nelson Championship, where he posted his third top 25 in six starts. He was going to play in the Turning Stone Resort Championship but stayed home with his infant daughter when his wife, Heather, had gall bladder surgery. Kevin Na, plagued by injuries the last two years, withdrew during the first round of the Valero Texas Open with a back injury. He tied for 24th last year in Vegas. Dan Forsman's tie for sixth at the Valero Texas Open gives him a berth in this week's Frys.com Open, where he holds a share of the course record, 62, at TPC The Canyons. John Daly, Craig Barlow, Ryan Palmer and Jay Williamson also own a piece of that record and all are in the field. Joe Ogilvie remains the only player on TOUR whose only top-10 this year is a victory. Ogilvie won his first PGA TOUR title at the U.S. Bank Championship at Milwaukee. Ogilvie has posted one top-10 in six starts in Las Vegas, where his low round is a 63. TOUR Insider's power ranking for the Frys.com Open: 1. Mike Weir, 2. Daniel Chopra, 3. Charley Hoffman, 4. Jason Gore, 5. Scott Verplank. |
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