| AP Sports Headlines |
PGA Tour upstages its own event
By RON SIRAK / AP Golf Writer
HOUSTON (AP) -- The season- ending Tour Championship and its $720,000 first prize came so short of generating any excite- ment on the eve of its start that the PGA Tour upstaged its own event with an announcement of even more riches for golfers.
A year ago, this tournament loomed as a spirited showdown for Player-of-the-Year honors among Tom Lehman, Phil Mick- elson and Mark Brooks that was won by Lehman in a runaway.
This time, Tiger Woods has that award wrapped up.
About all that can happen here, except for the top 30 players on the PGA Tour money list fat- tening their bank accounts a little more -- last place gets $64,000 -- is that Justin Leonard and Davis Love III have a chance to overtake Woods for the money title.
"It certainly is a pretty big tournament for us money-wise," Ernie Els said Wednesday, putting the Tour Championship into perspective among golf's major championships.
The tour and its multinational coalition, the International Federation, stole the spotlight from the event by announcing three new events in the World Golf Championships series for 1999, each of which will have a purse at least as great as the $4 mil- lion purse here.
The events -- a match play tournament in February, an invitational in August and a World Stroke Play Championship in November, all starting in 1999 -- are sort of like the Tour Championship in that they mean that those players who already have made a lot of money will make a lot more.
"It's great for the top 50 players in the world," Els said. "It was sort of inevitable. Golf right now is at a very high profile."
This Tour Championship at the Champions Golf Course could use a little bit of that high profile. Even the cool, damp weather added a gloom to an event that carried the feeling of a tournament players wanted to put behind them so they could put away the clubs and get out the fishing pole.
"It's been a long year," Woods said. "I've been playing tournament golf for 10 months and that's the first time I've ever done that. I'm ready to put the stick up for a while."
Before he does that he will have to tackle a true major championship quality course that plays more than 7,200 yards long and has enormous greens that de- mand great iron play.
"It seems like you are always hitting 4-, 5- and 6-irons into greens," Greg Norman said. "Outside of St. Andrews, these are the largest set of greens I've ever seen. Whoever lag-putts the best is going to win," he said. "There will be a lot of 100-foot putts."
If putting is the name of the game, Jim Furyk, Brad Faxon and Phil Mickelson should make a run at the title when play starts Thursday. If it is strong iron play, Lehman could very well defend his title or Scott Hoch could slip in.
One player with a real advantage is Steve Elkington, who has been a member of Champions Golf Club for a decade. The hottest player coming into the Tour Championship is David Duval, who won his last two starts.
Most likely the winner will be a guy who gets on a roll early and uses that momentum to carry himself through the end-of-the-season blahs and onward to a big check.
"You've got to have your whole game here this week," Els said.
Perhaps, more importantly, whomever wins needs to have his whole mind here this week. That player seems difficult to find.
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