Notes: Nine Hall of Famers teeing it up at Hualalai

text size

The 2012 Champions Tour season begins this week with the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai GC in Ka'upulehu-Kona, Hawaii. The purse is $1.8 million and the winner will receive $307,000 and 307 Charles Schwab Cup points. Last year, John Cook posted a final-round 64, including five consecutive birdies on the back nine, to win by two strokes from Tom Lehman. It was the first of three victories for Cook in 2011. Lehman also won three times last year and was voted 2011 Champions Tour Player of the Year.

RECENTLY

• Jim Carter joined fellow Champions Tour professionals Corey Pavin and Tom Pernice, Jr. as the only Champions Tour professionals to tee it up on the PGA TOUR at the Sony Open last week when he shot 68 to Monday qualify for the tournament. Carter eventually missed the cut, but Pavin, who received a sponsor exemption, recorded a T38 finish, while Pernice, who was eligible after finishing No. 121 on the 2011 PGA TOUR money list, finished T46. Pavin was a back-to-back winner of the tournament in 1986-87.

• Dave Rummells will be one of four native Iowans inducted into the Iowa Golf Hall of Fame this spring. Rummells has played 18 Champions Tour events over the last four years with a T20 at his Champions Tour debut (2008 Regions Charity Classic) as his best finish.

• Champions Tour professional Jay Haas, and his son Bill, the 2011 FedExCup champion, played a nine-hole exhibition match at Toscana CC in Palm Springs with their coach, Bill Harmon, and director of golf David Craig. After the exhibition, won by the younger Haas and Craig in a playoff, they were joined by Jay's uncle, the 1968 Masters winner Bob Goalby, for a Q&A session with about 200 Toscana members.

COMING UP

• The Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai will have a 41-player field this year. Fred Funk and Eduardo Romero are eligible, but are not entered for various reasons.

• The competitors in this year's Mitsubishi Electric Championship field have won a combined 351 events on the PGA TOUR and 220 tournaments on the Champions Tour, including 35 major championships on the PGA TOUR and 38 Champions Tour majors.

• There are nine members of the World Golf Hall of Fame in this year's field (Ben Crenshaw, Hale Irwin, Tom Kite, Bernhard Langer, Larry Nelson, Nick Price, Curtis Strange, Lanny Wadkins and Tom Watson).

• Cook will try to become the first player since Al Geiberger (1992, 1993) to successfully defend his title in the season opener. Last year, Cook became the first player since Gil Morgan in 1997-98 to win the season-opening event after claiming the last official tournament the previous year. He's the last player to successfully defend a title on the Champions Tour, winning the 2009-2010 Charles Schwab Cup Championship at the end of each season.

• Irwin will make his 17th consecutive appearance in this year's Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, the most ever in a row.

• Pavin was bogey free in last year's Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. Pavin was one of four players to have bogey-free tournaments in 2011. Three players -- Loren Roberts, Hal Sutton and Peter Senior -- went bogey free at the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn. Senior duplicated the accomplishment later in the year at the AT&T Championship.

• Champions Tour professional Peter Senior narrowly missed qualifying for the 2012 British Open last week at Final International Qualifying at Kingston Heath GC in Melbourne, Australia. Senior finished tied for 2nd at 1-under-par after the 36-hole event with fellow Australian's Nick Cullen and Ashley Hall but was defeated at the first hole of a sudden-death playoff. Aaron Townsend shot 4-under to gain the top position of the three available spots.

CHARLES SCHWAB CUP

• In the 11-year history of the Charles Schwab Cup, the winner of the season-opening event has gone on to finish among the top-five in the Schwab Cup race seven times.

• No winner of the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai has gone on to win the Charles Schwab Cup in the same year.

NUMBERS

16 -- The number of consecutive years the Hualalai GC will have hosted the Mitsubishi Electric Championship -- the third longest span at one club by any Champions Tour event (TPC Tampa Bay/21 years and Newport Beach CC/ 17 years).

100 -- The total number of double bogeys recorded at Hualalai Golf Club's 5th hole by Champions Tour professionals during the 15 years as host of the Mitsubishi Electric Championship. The next-highest number of double bogeys is 31, at holes 8 and 11. Not surprisingly, hole No. 5 is the only hole at Hualalai that ranked in the top-50 most difficult holes on the Champions Tour in 2011.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Loren Roberts, a 12-time winner on the Champions Tour, has never had a hole-in-one during the 431 rounds of his Champions Tour career. Roberts made six aces during the 2,122 rounds of his PGA TOUR career, where he won eight times.

ON THIS DATE

1/21/07 -- Shooting rounds of 66-62-65, Hale Irwin blitzes the field by five strokes to win the

MasterCard Championship at Hualalai. At age 61, Irwin won for the ninth time in the Aloha State, including eight on the Champions Tour.

QUOTES TO NOTE

"At this stage in my life, in what I want to achieve both personally and professionally, the Champions Tour fits like a glove for me." -- 2011 Champions Tour Player of the Year Tom Lehman compares the Champions Tour to the PGA TOUR during the Allianz Championship Media Day last week.

"I'm a little bit envious of this golf course ? it actually eats better than I do. You see the grass out there and you realize it has been fertilized by New York strip while I'm usually eating a hot dog." -- Tom Lehman refers to the venue of the Allianz Championship, which will benefit from composted food being turned into fertilizer for the golf course. A goal of the tournament is to become one of the most environmentally green golf tournaments in the world. In addition to the food project, the tournament is undertaking a scientific study on its carbon footprint, hiring a firm of scientists out of North Carolina, and it is also striving to use 100 percent renewable energy within two years.