Stewart’s Memory Will Be Honored at Morning Ceremony

The first--and only--official event honoring the late Payne Stewart will be held at 7 a.m. today at the 18th green of Pebble Beach Golf Links.

A small ceremony will take place and four will speak about Stewart: his widow, Tracey; USGA President Trey Holland; Paul Azinger and Larry Moody, the PGA Tour’s Bible studies leader.

At the end of the event, 21 players will hit golf balls into Carmel Bay. Ticket holders for today’s practice round can attend.

“This will be the last opportunity to say goodbye to Payne,” Azinger said. “It’s hard to imagine, but I think that’s right. We just need to honor the defending champion, and the man himself, one more time.”

Stewart and five others died Oct. 25 in a private jet crash in South Dakota, although speculation is that they died hours earlier when the craft apparently lost pressure after taking off from Orlando, Fla.

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Azinger, who was one of Stewart’s closest friends, said it has been extremely difficult for him and his fellow pros to cope with his death.

“I think the majority of us are still in disbelief that Payne Stewart is not here,” Azinger said. “We’ve all been affected and impacted in a big way. . . . I think just getting on an airplane now is different than it was for all of us.

“It’s just hard to grasp, really, that a tragedy of that magnitude could have happened to the current U.S. Open champion. I don’t think that any of us realized his popularity.”

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Masters champion Vijay Singh has three top-10 finishes at the U.S. Open and tied for third last year at Pinehurst in North Carolina. But Singh hasn’t finished better than 24th since the week after he won at Augusta, when he tied for third in the MCI Classic at Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Nevertheless, Singh says he’s confident now that he has improved his putting.

“If I get into contention early, I have a very good chance of winning and doing good things,” Singh said. “But I cannot look into the next two majors. Right now, my focus is on this one here. Ever since the Masters, I’ve been looking forward to it.”

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For what it’s worth, here is Singh’s list of potential Open winners (in no particular order of odds): Tiger Woods, David Duval, Nick Price, Greg Norman, Ernie Els, Colin Montgomerie, Lee Westwood.

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Phil Mickelson, last year’s runner-up to Stewart, is still without a major championship title. With three victories in 2000, Mickelson is going to get plenty of attention as a potential winner this time. . . . He just wishes he already had it done.

“The biggest disappointment [in my career] is after having won a PGA Tour event as an amateur, my expectations were extremely high [and] to have zero majors to this point is disappointing,” he said. “I would not have guessed that eight years ago.”

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Tom Kite was 42 when he won the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach--his only major championship title--and he believes being an old-timer here might help him and a few others.

“Experience is going to be a large factor on this golf course, there’s no question about that,” Kite said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Jack [Nicklaus] having a good tournament or Tom [Watson] or Hale [Irwin] or myself having a good tournament.

“Win it? I don’t know. We’re not used to playing on the PGA Tour on a regular basis and it’s a little different animal, it really is.”