One Will Be the Best of the Best : Golf: Grand Slam brings together winners of the year’s four majors.

It may not be the toughest tournament in the world to win, but it’s probably the toughest one to qualify for.

It’s the $1-million PGA Grand Slam of golf, which brings together the winners of the year’s four major tournaments on the same course, in this case the Nicklaus Course at PGA West.

Bernhard Langer, Lee Janzen, Greg Norman and Paul Azinger play 27 holes today and finish with nine holes Wednesday. The winner bags $400,000, which isn’t too bad for a 36-hole event.

Masters champion Langer, who won the individual title Sunday at the World Cup of Golf, is apparently sound again after injuring his knee the week after the Ryder Cup competition in September.

Langer hasn’t played the Nicklaus Course at PGA West, but he has won tournaments in Salzburg, Austria, and Plymouth, England, on Nicklaus-designed layouts.

While Nicklaus “used to get slightly carried away with some of the greens design,” Langer said he doesn’t intend to spend 36 holes worrying about the shape of the greens or the pressure of what to do with the ball when he steps on them. The time for that is over, he said.

“What this event is, it’s a reward for having won one of the four major tournaments of the year,” Langer said. “Yes, there’s a lot of money at stake and a lot of pride.

“Everybody will be trying very hard to win. Nobody wants to finish last.”

In Langer’s case, he just doesn’t want to play on the PGA Tour. The two-time Masters champion (he also won in 1985) entered only six PGA Tour events this year and five in 1992.

After winning the Masters, Langer tied for 16th at the Heritage and missed the cut at both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.

Langer said he long ago decided to let his PGA Tour card lapse because he doesn’t want to play in the required 15 tournaments a year.

“I was playing up to 35 events a year,” Langer said. “As I got a little older, I had other interests and I felt very pressured to play (the PGA Tour and European Tour).

“I felt I had to play almost every week possible to get my minimum number of tournaments in on both sides of the Atlantic.

“My golf has actually improved and so has my health the last few years since I’ve taken it a bit more easy.”

Easy? Langer played 14 events in Europe, won twice (including a 19-under score at the German Open) and finished in the top five eight times.

He won $469,569 on the European Tour and $626,937 on the PGA Tour.

Lee Janzen, who earned his entry into the field by winning the U.S. Open, said there is one player who figures to be the toughest.

“Greg Norman is always the favorite,” Janzen said. “He’s always ready to play--and he always plays great.”

Janzen knows about the Nicklaus Course from unpleasant experience. The only time he played the 7,126-yard course was at the PGA Tour qualifying school in 1988, when he posted three quadruple bogeys in the finishing round.

Golf Notes

Play begins today at 7:30 a.m. and the last nine holes will be played starting at 7 a.m. Wednesday. . . . All 36 holes will be broadcast both days on TBS at 4:05 p.m. PST. . . . The event was founded in 1979 to raise funds for the PGA Junior Golf Foundation. . . . Second place is worth $250,000, third place $200,000 and fourth place $150,000.