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PGA Tour Healthy With All That Lettuce

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So, just how healthy is the PGA Tour? Let’s put it this way: There’s a reason the putting surfaces are referred to as greens.

The tour is flush with money, awash in revenue and is planning to acquire even more, what with the cable TV contracts expiring at the end of the year. New deals are in the works.

The 49 official PGA Tour events offer prize money of about $159 million, the nine events on the West Coast offering $30.1 million of that.

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“The entire PGA Tour did not play for that much money until 1987,” said Tim Finchem, the tour’s commissioner.

NICKLAUS I AND II

There’s a faint chance Jack Nicklaus will play the Nissan Open at Riviera Country Club, Feb. 17-20, but tournament director Tom Pulchinski believes Nicklaus is more likely to take the week off.

If Nicklaus does enter the Nissan Open, his son, Gary, will receive a sponsor’s exemption so they can be paired.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Bob Murphy, master of ceremonies at the California Golf Writers Assn. dinner, introducing Casey Martin and Notah Begay: “One guy here who rides a cart and another guy here who can’t drive one.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK II

Sergio Garcia, reminded that his nickname, El Nino, does not necessarily mean something favorable: “I’m the one who is playing, not the one who is up there in the clouds. So this El Nino is OK, is not going to give you any problems.”

BUT WHO’S COUNTING?

In delivering his state-of-the tour message to the media Wednesday, Finchem used the words “tremendous,” “delighted” and “outstanding” a combined 11 times.

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FAME, LIFE

Kevin Costner made an unexpected appearance in the interview room Tuesday. It began this way:

Costner: So long as it’s a safe room, I will talk as openly and as freely as you want to ask questions that seem like they fall within the lines of decency.

Mark Soltau of CBS Sportline: Wrong group.

Costner: Could be a short interview.

It wasn’t, of course, and Costner eventually went on to talk about fame.

“I’m not asking for anybody to cry for me. I’ve lived a life. I love my life. Minus fame, I think [my life] would be maybe more interesting. . . . But if I had to weigh . . . the anonymity that a person can have is gold. It’s really gold. It’s gold for people to be able to discover you before thinking they know you. That’s all.”

Uh, thanks. See you at the movies.

CYBER GOLF

Tiger Woods is happy about it and the PGA Tour is happy about it, but will television be happy about it?

It remains to be seen how the networks that televise golf are going to react to some new interactive technology available with the PC version of Tiger Woods 2000 by EA Sports.

Called “Play Against the Pros,” gamers watch a cyber Woods play his round as he is actually playing it in a tournament. Gamers play against him, all in real time. The game is making its debut with Woods at Pebble Beach.

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The implications for the networks are that the game could conflict with telecasts of golf events.

“I don’t know if the right word for their reaction is ‘trepidation,’ but probably more like ‘interest,’ ” Finchem said. “Internet rights, as it relates to broadcasts, should not be in question.”

Jeff Brown, senior director of corporate communications for Electronic Arts, says the technology is not a threat to the networks.

“It complements the broadcasts,” Brown said. “There’s no competition, so in many instances, people playing against the pros listen to the telecast.”

HISTORY LESSON

For what it’s worth, Spyglass Hill Golf Course takes its name from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel “Treasure Island.” According to legend, Stevenson once wandered around the Spyglass area and gathered writing ideas.

BOARDROOM TO GREEN

Also for what it’s worth, the chief executive officer with the lowest handicap in the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am field is Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems at 3.3. Charles R. Schwab of Charles Schwab is second with a 6.1.

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HINT: HOLD ON

Tom Kite, who expects to play as many as 20 events as a rookie on the Senior PGA Tour, says he still gets nervous before tournaments, but he insists it makes him a better player.

“That’s why some people ride roller coasters and other people ride carousels,” he said. “Stick me on the roller coasters.”

MORE KITE

As for the compensation issue that threatened to bog down the U.S. team and captain Ben Crenshaw at last year’s Ryder Cup, Kite finds fault with a certain group.

“In all honesty, I think the PGA [of America] probably should have handled it a couple of years before,” he said.

HUH?

At a news conference announcing the PGA Tour’s involvement in a Payne Stewart golf complex at the Kids Across America Camp in Branson, Mo., club founder Joe White broke into an impromptu semi-rap-cum- poetry routine about the types of kids he sees.

Stay with me now: “Apple pie bakers and movers and shakers, and blonds and brunets and California dreamers and hard show screamers, doodlers, dunkers, straight A’s and flunkers, singers, planners, flinchers and rollers, gutter-ball bowlers and slowpokes and darters and handkerchief users, interstate bikers, wilderness hikers, Jordache wranglers, kissers-and-tellers and friends of the fellers and fingernail biters, muscle men, body-up hunters, load-up newspaper readers, drivers, speed-up out-of-funnies, people with answers and crazy break dancers and basketball slam dunkers, out-of-sight honeys, and shy ones and funnies.”

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Somewhere, Will Smith is breathing easier.

MONEY NEWS

When he won $41,728 last week at the Phoenix Open, Davis Love III passed Greg Norman to become the all-time leading money winner on the PGA Tour with $12.54 million.

Said Love, “It would be pretty amazing, how much money Sam Snead would have won.”

Snead won 83 tournaments and earned $620,126. Love has won 13 tournaments.

OUT AND IN

Karrie Webb, Annika Sorenstam and Juli Inkster are passing on next week’s Los Angeles Women’s Championship at Wood Ranch, but Se Ri Pak and defending champion Catrin Nilsmark are in the field.

The 54-hole event, which moved from Oakmont Country Club in Glendale to the Simi Valley track, has increased its prize money $150,000 to $750,000 this year.

BIRDIES, BOGEYS, PARS

The Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission is sponsoring a celebrity tournament May 22 at Riviera. The event benefits the nonprofit LASEC. Details: (213) 236-2361.

The 11th Bulldog Bench tournament will be played March 20 at Redlands Country Club. The event benefits the University of Redlands athletic programs. Details: (909) 335-4004.

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