Irwin Seeking a Double : Golf: Three-time U.S. Open champion trying for victories on regular and senior tours in same year.

Hale Irwin, three-time U.S. Open champion, could accomplish a rare feat this season, having a chance to become only the second golfer to win tournaments on the PGA’s regular and senior tours in the same year.

Raymond Floyd, after winning at Doral in 1992, became 50 in September and quickly won on the senior circuit to become the first.

Irwin, who turns 50 June 3 and becomes eligible for a senior tournament at Nashville the next week, is coming off one of his best years in a career that began in 1968.

In 1994, he won the MCI Heritage at Hilton Head, S.C., finished second once and was 10th on the money list. As the “Old Man” on what the seniors laughingly call the junior tour, he won $814,436, only about $24,000 short of his best in 1990.

In his fourth tournament this year, he bogeyed No. 18 Thursday at Riviera Country Club to finish with a two-under-par 69 in the first round of the Nissan L.A. Open.

He was just off the green on the par-four finishing hole in two, but, he said, “I hit a horrible chip.”

The former Colorado defensive back, who won here in 1976 for one of his 20 tour victories, said winning on both tours in the same year is definitely a goal.

That is something Jack Nicklaus has pursued in vain for five years. Nicklaus seems unable to win against the long-driving younger set, but Irwin has proved he can.

Although he said he’s put the senior tour out of his mind, he can’t help but mull over the possibilities.

“But I can’t think about June,” he said. “I have to concentrate on this tour. I still have things I want to accomplish here. Until I do, I can’t think about anything else.

“It’s probable that I’ll play in my first senior event the second week in June. But, depending on how I do out here, I probably will not get into a full schedule until 1996.”

Although most younger players have more distance, experience has paid off for Irwin. He won his first U.S. Open at Winged Foot in 1974, repeated at Inverness in 1979 and won again at Medinah in 1990.

Irwin had not won since 1985, and many were counting him out. Again last year, he had to prove that he belonged in fast company, which, again, he did.

“Although I putted poorly at Pebble Beach and missed the cut, I feel great,” he said. “I have a new set of graphite irons, and I’m hitting the ball well.”