Right Up His Alley

The window is open, and as far as Gil Morgan is concerned, it’s the pay window.

There’s $267,500 available in the U.S. Senior Open this week to add to the $1,325,793 he already has won in 1998. And the $2,160,562 he won last year.

To the $3.6 million he has won since turning 50.

The window is the first few years in the transition from the PGA Tour to the Senior PGA Tour, when the body still thinks it’s young and convinces the game to go along for the ride.

“I think statistically, about 87% of the tournaments are won by those between the ages of 50 and 56,” Morgan said Tuesday, about to hit a three-wood 300 yards off the cliff that is the first tee at Riviera.

“It’s a time when we are the youngest ones out here and our games are in pretty good shape.”

He’s 51 now, and his game has seldom been better.

Graham Marsh is certainly impressed.

He spent part of Tuesday handicapping the U.S. Senior Open field, and it didn’t take long.

“If I had to pick a man right now, Gil’s been in form,” said Marsh, who won last year’s senior open at Olympia Fields in Illinois. “You can see if you look at the golf course . . . that it’s set up for the two players that we have on the tour that are playing the best: Morgan and [Hale] Irwin.

“Morgan has the advantage here because of his length. Irwin has an advantage here because of his great iron play. But . . . we know it’s probably going to come down to the putter anyway . . . [and] Gil on almost all par fours is going to be coming in with relatively short clubs to some of these greens and that’s going to be a huge plus for him.”

And when he gets to the greens, the plus is even greater.

“I’m putting better than I’ve ever putted,” Morgan said. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

It is, because at a time in life when so many golfers have missed so often they are afraid to draw back a club, Morgan is making the putts that used to plague him, ranking fourth on the senior tour with an average of 1.744 a hole.

He’s making the ones that cost him a U.S. Open in 1992 at Pebble Beach.

The ones that held him to seven wins on the PGA Tour. He has 11 in only 20 months on the senior tour, taking no time at all to win his first, the Ralphs at Wilshire. He was 11 days past his 50th birthday when he won that one, and no one younger has won on the senior tour.

He could always hit the ball a long way, and that’s no different now. He’s fourth on the senior tour driving list.

And No. 1 on the senior majors list, at least this year. He won the Tradition at Scottsdale, coupling that with his Tradition win in 1997; and the Ford Senior Players Championship two weeks ago in Dearborn, Mich. A win at Riviera this weekend would make him the first player to win three senior majors in a year since Jack Nicklaus did it in 1991 and perhaps conjure up thoughts of a near-Geezer Grand Slam.

Only finishing third to Irwin’s wire-to-wire win in the Senior PGA cost Morgan a chance at all four senior majors this year.

And winning at Riviera would be nothing new for Morgan, who took the L.A. Open in in 1978.

And it’s important to him, after slipping through his PGA Tour life with only a few near-misses to show in major tournaments.

“[Senior majors] are as important to the senior players as the others were to the regular players,” Morgan said. “Guys like [Jack] Nicklaus might not think it’s as important to win here, I don’t know. That’s just something I’m speculating on. But for most of the players, it’s important in their careers.”

In part, it’s probably because those careers are so short. Tiger Woods won the Masters at 21, and a year later Mark O’Meara won it at 41. That window is broad, open for decades once you first go through it at about the time you can finally legally drink the champagne to celebrate the process.

“Historically . . . every time a quality player comes onto the tour, they have dominated for a couple of years,” Marsh said. “I think it’s fair to say that when Arnold [Palmer] did it, he played very well in the early days. Remember when Peter Thomson came over and he won nine times.”

And then a new gunner comes along, and nostalgia becomes an increasing part of the old gunner’s reason for playing.

Here come Lanny Wadkins and Tom Watson.

“Well, I don’t think Hale and Gil are going to give up . . . what they are enjoying right now all that easily,” Marsh said.

What they are enjoying is up a notch from anything they experienced in PGA Tour careers that were honored, if not always complete.

“I think the level of success has been a surprise,” Morgan said of his own exploits. “I think I knew I was going to be a success, but you never know at what level.”

The level is high, and there is a bit of head-to-head competition, with Irwin leading the money parade at $1,735,250.

“I don’t know if there’s a rivalry there,” Morgan said cautiously. “There are a lot of good players.”

There are, but Marsh has the answer here.

“If you’re coming back to favorites . . . you have to look at those two,” he said.

The window is open to them, and Morgan is ready to go through a third time in 1998.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

U.S. SENIOR OPEN: RIVIERA, 1998

When: Thursday through Sunday

Where: Riviera Country Club, Pacific Palisades (6,906 yards, par 71)

Defending champion: Graham Marsh.

Television: ESPN (Thursday and Friday, 12:30 and 4:30 p.m. both days); Channel 4 (Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. both days).