Cochran, Calcavecchia, Lu collect wins overseas

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Chris Condon/PGA TOUR

Mark Calcavecchia won the Nedbank Senior Challenge last week in South Africa, beating a field including several Champions players.

RECENTLY

• Mark Calcavecchia rallied to win the Nedbank Senior Challenge in South Africa last week, which featured eight Champions Tour professionals, by a stroke over Ian Woosnam and Bernhard Langer. Calcavecchia (67) had five birdies in the final round to finish 9-under in three rounds, beating overnight leader Langer (71) and Woosnam (70) in the race for the $250,000 first prize for seniors. Calcavecchia finished second to Langer in the main tournament at Sun City in 1991.

• Champions Tour professional Tommy Armour III won the second stage of PGA TOUR Qualifying School at the Hombre GC (Bad/Ugly) in Panama City, Fla, shooting 8-under 276 to win by three strokes to advance to the final stage where he was the oldest competitor at age 52. Armour withdrew after completing five of the six rounds at the final stage. The last time Armour contested the PGA TOUR Qualifying School was 2001.

• Travis Wadkins, son of Champions Tour professional Lanny Wadkins, finished T120 at the PGA TOUR Qualifying School while Arnold Palmer's grandson Sam Saunders finished T109.

• The Montreal Championship is getting a new home and a new date in 2012. Next year's edition of the Champions Tour event will be held at La Vallee du Richelieu Golf Club in Sainte-Julie, Quebec, Canada, June 18-24. The previous two events were held at Le Fontainebleau in Blainville and the new date is a week earlier than in the past.

• This year's Community Advocate Award recipient in the Greater Binghamton area is Broome County Community Charities, which has served the region for over 40 years, hosting the B.C. Open on the PGA TOUR for 36 years and the Dick's Sporting Goods Open on the Champions Tour for 5 years. The Community Advocate of the Year is awarded to an organization that has made a significant contribution to the improvement and/or enrichment of the neighborhood it serves, or the Greater Binghamton area as a whole.

• Russ Cochran, the 2011 British Senior Open Championship winner was one of several Champions Tour professionals who competed in the 48th Jamaica Open last week where the purse was $85,000. Cochran shot 68-70-68?206 (-10) to win the title by two shots from Dave Rummells.

• Cochran, Olin Browne, the reigning U.S. Senior Open champion, and Mark Brooks, a former multiple Pebble Beach Invitational winner (1992, 2002 and 2009) recently competed in the Pebble Beach Invitational. Other Champions Tour professionals who played at Pebble Beach included Jim Thorpe, Bruce Fleisher, Steve Lowery, Chip Beck and Dan Forsman. Cochran posted the best result of the Champions Tour players, finishing fourth, two strokes behind winner Harrison Frazar.

• Jose Coceres went wire-to-wire to win the Torneo de Maestros Copa Personal on the Tour de las Americas in Argentina last week, winning by four strokes over fellow Argentine Ricardo Gonzalez. Five-time Champions Tour winner Eduardo Romero finished T12.

• Champions Tour professional Chien-Soon Lu returned to the Far East recently and claimed his first European Senior Tour victory with a win at the inaugural Fubon Senior Open in Taiwan.

• Champions Tour professional David Frost will defend his title at the MCB Tour Championship in Mauritius on the European Senior Tour this week. Also in the field will be 2011 Charles Schwab Cup winner Tom Lehman. The focus will be on Peter Fowler and Barry Lane who are bidding to capture the Order of Merit title for leading money winner on the European Senior Tour. Fowler takes a 25,000 Euro lead over Lane into the final event of the season.

• Champions Tour professional Dana Quigley's son Devon is fighting for his life in a Florida hospital after suffering a traumatic head injury in a car accident last week.

NUMBERS

24 -- The number of Champions Tour events played by Jeff Sluman (6th on the money list) and Rod Spittle (22nd on the money list) in 2011. They were the only two players to contest every event during the season.

71.17 -- The Champions Tour's overall scoring average for 2011, the lowest average in the history of the Tour. The previous best was 71.39 in 2007.

DID YOU KNOW?

Champions Tour professional Lanny Wadkins' son (Travis) was one of seven players who qualified for the final stage of the PGA TOUR Qualifying School by making it through all three stages. Travis finished T120 and will have conditional status on the Nationwide Tour in 2012.

QUOTES TO NOTE

"I was scared all day, nervous all day and anxious all day. I just tried to play one shot at a time and get through the darned thing." -- Jeff Freeman discusses the final round after winning the Champions Tour National Qualifying School last month.

"I just wanted to see if I could do it. I've got a job next year playing on the Champions Tour. There is more money on the PGA TOUR. There is more of everything." -- Tommy Armour III comments on his decision to attempt the PGA TOUR National Qualifying Tournament. He withdrew after the fifth round at the finals.

"It was an interesting situation where a car was coming up and the guy had his window down and I'm walking up to him doing this (waving arms as if to stop traffic) down the street and he started winding his window up thinking I must have been coming to take him on or something." -- Presidents Cup International Team Captain Greg Norman describes trying to move the traffic after the official team bus got stuck down a side street in Melbourne, Australia.

"The first time I've won U.S. dollars and they're worth nothing." -- Peter Senior, who finished 7th on the Champions Tour money list with $1,434,119, laments the state of the U.S. dollar versus the Australian dollar (the Aussie dollar has been worth about five cents more than the greenback for most of 2011), a big difference from other periods during Senior's career when the Aussie dollar was worth 60 U.S. cents.