Rivalry Boosts Tour, Thwarts Foes

When Hale Irwin shot a 62 in the final round of the Toshiba Senior Classic last year at Newport Beach Country Club, it almost didn’t seem like a big deal. After all, if Irwin hadn’t done something spectacular, then Gil Morgan would have.

That’s how it seemed anyway on the Senior PGA Tour in 1998. Playing for third, that’s what everybody else did when Irwin and Morgan were in a tournament.

“You’d see Hale and Gil in the clubhouse and then check to see what third-place money was,” Bob Murphy said Tuesday. “It was that kind of year.”

Irwin, who won seven tournaments and was named player of the year, and Morgan, who won six tournaments, dominated their sport in the same way that Michael Jordan and the Bulls dominated the NBA.

It was golf, Murphy said, played at “such a high level that I don’t think people even appreciated how good they were.”

“Hale, to me, should have been on the Ryder Cup team,” Murphy said. “On that [narrow] course in Spain, he would have played every match and won most of them.

“I was in the last group on the last day with Hale and Gil last season in Detroit. Gil made, in the first five holes, four putts between five and 25 feet for birdies, and Hale turned to me and said, ‘Have you ever seen putting like that?’ And I just started laughing and said, ‘Yeah, Hale, from you for the last year and a half.’ ”

As the seniors arrive in Newport Beach for the 1999 event, Irwin and Morgan are back. But they aren’t back as the dominators. There have been five Senior PGA tournaments so far this season and four different winners.

Bruce Fleisher, in his first year on the tour, has won twice but isn’t playing this week because of a viral infection that sent him to the hospital. Larry Nelson, Allen Doyle and John Jacobs have won once.

Irwin and Morgan each have only one top-10 finish. Morgan stands 21st on the money list and Irwin 24th. But if you think the other golfers are happy about this, if you think it’s exciting for them to have wide-open fields, that’s not exactly the case.

“I wish it had been me last year,” said Hubert Green, who had led the Senior Classic going into last year’s final round before Irwin left Green as so much road kill. “But it was probably good for the tour because it got the headlines.”

Gary McCord, better known as a knowledgeable and dryly funny TV announcer than as a golfer, played in five senior events last season, his first on the tour, and he hopes to play as many as 12 this year. And, sure, he would like to win, but he also realizes what good Irwin and Morgan did for the tour last year.

“A sport needs rivalries and it needs hype,” McCord said. “It’s like when Tiger [Woods] and [David] Duval are going head to head. That gets everybody’s juices flowing. So, yes, maybe we were all looking at what third-place money was on certain weeks, but I was just talking to somebody today about this.

“With Hale and Gil last year, it was like when Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams were playing baseball together. One having a 56-game hitting streak, one batting over .400. It’s bad if you have just one great player, but if you have two guys pushing each other, I think that’s great. It’s great for TV, it’s great for the corporate sponsors.”

Neither Irwin nor Morgan was on the practice tee Tuesday. As well as they played last season, Murphy, who won here in 1997, says the constant competition between the two in 1998, the quest to beat the other week after week, also took its toll. Because, let’s face it, these guys aren’t Tiger and Duval. They are over 50, and while perfection might look the same, it sure feels different.

“By the end of last year,” Murphy said, “those guys were tired. You could see it. I played with Hale in Hawaii [in October] and he was tired. He said he was. It was a positive for the tour, what those guys did, because they played very, very good golf. But I don’t think they could do it again.

“The thing about this tour, though, is that you need some guys to play at that level. You need players playing very, very good golf. Otherwise, people won’t keep coming out.”

McCord said he thinks everybody had to play a little better last year to avoid being embarrassed. “Hale and Gil raised the level for everybody,” he said.

The nature of the senior tour is that the dominators have a short shelf life. “You have a window between the ages of 50 and 55,” 59-year-old George Archer said, “and then, except on a very rare basis, you’re not going to win.”

And so someone new, like Fleisher, comes along and sets a new standard. Fleisher won the first two senior events he entered, something players like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus couldn’t accomplish. Later this summer, Tom Watson becomes eligible. Perhaps another standard will be set.

But to stay solidly in the focus of U.S. sports fans, the senior tour will always need something special. “Ya gotta have hype,” McCord says. “You just do.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com