Couples Defends at Shootout

Golf’s so-called off-season continues today with the start of another tournament, the $1.1-million Franklin Templeton Shark Shootout, where the defending champion knows what is at stake and what isn’t.

“If I do win, it’s not like I won the U.S. Open,” Fred Couples said.

Couples and Brad Faxon will defend their title at Sherwood Country Club. They scored a two-stroke victory over Mark O’Meara and Curtis Strange last year with a 54-hole total of 26-under-par 190.

The three-day event, which benefits children’s charities, including the National Childhood Cancer Foundation and Casa Pacifica, is played in a different format each day: alternate shot, best ball and scramble.

Ten two-man teams are entered. Besides Couples-Faxon and Strange-O’Meara, the teams are Tom Kite and Jay Haas, Lee Janzen and Chip Beck, Tom Lehman and David Duval, Hale Irwin and Bruce Lietzke, Mark Calcavecchia and Steve Elkington, Greg Norman and Raymond Floyd, Peter Jacobsen and Arnold Palmer, and Fuzzy Zoeller and John Daly.