Search Results It's got major flavor, but to Woods, TPC is merely a tuneup By Jimmy Burch Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. - It has the international flavor of a major championship, with 46 of the top 50 players in the world golf rankings prepared to tee off in Thursday's opening round. It offers the highest pay day of any tournament on the PGA Tour calendar, with Sunday's winner at The Players Championship slated to collect $720,000. That's double what Ernie Els earned by winning last week's Bay Hill Invitational and $234,000 above the announced payout to the person who slips into the green jacket the 1998 Masters Tournament. Yet, for all the trappings, the TPC is contested on a week when it is overshadowed by the NCAA Final Four, and its 144-player field comprises golfers who are unsure where to rank it on the sport's pecking order. Tiger Woods, the 1997 PGA Tour player of the year, made it clear Wednesday that this remains little more than a final tuneup before his Masters defense, regardless of the prize money involved or the event's 25th anniversary. "I don't think anything can be as important as the four majors. They are at another level," Woods said. "I think it is great for all of us as players ... to have this tournament right before a major to compare ourselves and see where we need improvement as we get ready for the Masters and the rest of the year. It would be great to win this tournament. But if I don't win, that is fine, too. Just as long as my game is peaking for the Masters." Els, meanwhile, uttered the PGA Tour party line that the TPC ranks as a "fifth major" to its participants. "Certainly, for me, this is our fifth major," Els said. "This is one that players really regard as "the" tournament on tour. You win this tournament, you get a lot of respect from everybody because this is probably the strongest field in golf." It has enough allure that Phil Mickelson, who strained the muscles in his lower back during last week's Bay Hill event, took anti-inflammatory medication Wednesday so that he could tee up in Thursday's opening round. But in discussing his client's injury, Mickelson representative Mike Biggs said Wednesday that the 27-year-old left-hander "won't do anything to risk Masters week" while attempting to complete his 72 holes at TPC. David Duval, a Jacksonville, Fla., native who grew up attending the TPC, said he understands such logic. Asked to place the TPC in terms of his personal pecking order, Duval said: "It's fifth-most important to me, behind the majors." Colin Montgomerie, the European Tour's leading money winner for the past five seasons, places it higher than that. "I classify it as a major," said Montgomerie, who seeks his first career victory on the PGA Tour. "This tournament stands alone, as far as I'm concerned, as the best week of the year from a playing point of view." (c) 1998, Fort Worth Star-Telegram Visit the Star-Telegram on the World Wide Web: www.startext.net; www.arlington.net; and www.netarrant.net. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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