Lietzke Wants Many Senior Moments

Is the Senior PGA Tour ready for the Bruce Lietzke era? Hey, it can’t hurt much, and besides, the easygoing Lietzke might be able to show the suddenly grumpy group of grinders out there on the senior tour that there is another way to do business.

Lietzke turns 50 on Wednesday and plays his first senior event right away, so he is not wasting any time. Lietzke hasn’t been wasting much time on the PGA Tour, either. He scaled back his tournament commitments years ago to spend more time with his family.

And now that his kids are older--Stephen is 17 and Christine is 15--Lietzke figures it’s a good time to get out there and start scooping up some of the cash guys such as Larry Nelson, Gil Morgan and Bruce Fleisher have been collecting the last few years.

“It will be the start of a new world for me,” Lietzke said.

Yeah, playing regularly is going to be an abrupt change of pace for him. He plans on playing what is basically a full-time schedule for the next several years.

“Mentally, I’m very, very fresh,” he said.

How could he not be? He won 13 times on the PGA Tour and probably could have won more often if he had stayed out there.

But that’s not the way Lietzke did it. After all, here’s a guy who set up his swing in 1974 and hasn’t changed it since. We will see if his way of doing business works on the over-50 tour.

Honk if You Love Majors

News item: Darren Clarke, who won the European Open last week, reveals he has seven cars and three houses.

Reaction: And no major titles.

Tiger Update

News item: Tiger Woods ties for 20th at the Western Open, marking the third consecutive tournament he has finished out of the top 10, something he hadn’t done since 1998.

Reaction: It won’t matter one bit when he tees it up next week at the British Open at Royal Lytham.

Tiger TV Update

The PGA Tour’s new television deal that will start in 2003 is supposedly done, and it’s believed to be worth $850 million, 50% more than the current agreement.

And in a nice arrangement for two sides, if Tiger has made the tour happy by inflating the numbers, then the tour also has made Tiger happy by doing away with the rights’ fee he had to pay for his Williams World Challenge. That’s part of the TV deal as well, insiders say.

More Tiger News

You can add another event to Woods’ calendar in November. He is going to play Shigeki Maruyama of Japan in a made-for-television showdown by Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting Co., in Japan on Nov. 12, just before the WGC-EMC World Cup, also in Japan, Nov. 15-18.

After that, Woods will play the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in Hawaii, Nov. 20-21 and the Skins Game in Indio, Nov. 24-25.

Last Tiger Update

Kieron Dyer, a soccer player for Newcastle United, lost his English driver’s license for two months and was fined $1,400 Monday after admitting he’d driven his car 104 mph while listening to Woods win the Masters in April.

Said Dyer, “What can I say? I’m a Tiger Woods fan.”

Golf on the radio?

Adios, Lee

Lee Trevino insists this week’s Ford Senior Players is the last senior tour major he will enter. Trevino, 61, won six majors on the PGA Tour and four on the senior tour.

He said he will be forever grateful for the way things turned out for him and that he’s proud he was a success.

“If I hadn’t, I’d be picking up range balls in El Paso or Dallas,” he said.

Of Course

Colin Montgomerie is designing his first golf course in Europe, a links course in Ireland, not in his home country of Scotland.

Says Montgomerie: “This is very close to home here, so we have to get it right.”

Brooch the Subject

The quote of the week is from Mel Webb in the London Times, describing Thomas Bjorn’s 15-foot eagle putt on the last hole of the European Open that put him 15 under on the par-five holes for the week and won a $150,000 seven-carat diamond from a jeweler.

Wrote Webb: “A gem of a shot if there ever was one.”

Get the Phone

News item: Phil Mickelson credits his own “psych job” of staying in a positive state of mind, of not folding down the stretch and for his victory at Hartford.

Reaction: Davis Love, call Phil.

No Retief?

So U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen is backtracking now and saying he isn’t going to leave the European PGA Tour to play the PGA Tour. He said fellow South African Ernie Els advised him to stay put.

This is a curious matter because Els did exactly the opposite of what he apparently has advised Goosen. It could be that Els meant that Goosen should stick around until the end of the year and see if he can win the Order of Merit, but remaining in Europe to play in 2002 seems pointless.

The money, the competition and the courses are all reasons why most prominent players decide it is wise to leave the pro tours of their homelands and play the PGA Tour instead.

It’s a path followed by Els, Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Bernhard Langer and Jesper Parnevik, and more recently by Sergio Garcia, Jose Maria Olazabal and Miguel Angel Jimenez.

Going for Three

Looking ahead, the PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club is only five weeks away and Woods has a shot at winning his third in succession. The last guy to do that was Walter Hagen in 1926.

One-Car Crash

News item: The Phoenix Open is reportedly considering bringing on Ford as a title sponsor.

Reaction: That’s one more tournament Woods, who endorses Buick, won’t play.

The Long of It

Tom Fazio and his bulldozers are doing their work at Augusta National, where some of the par-four holes are being lengthened because of the greater distances the pros are getting off the tee.

It was interesting to hear Jack Nicklaus pop off when asked about the changes. As you might have guessed, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but when a six-time Masters champion speaks, we probably should listen.

“It’s their course, not mine, [but] it’s not what I would do,” said Nicklaus, who suggested the fairways be narrowed instead. He also reverted to his standard line of making golf balls that don’t go as far.

Memo to Jack: If that’s what you really want to see, spend more time watching the LPGA Tour.

British Defections

Two-time U.S Open champion Lee Janzen and Kirk Triplett have withdrawn from next week’s British Open.

Janzen, who has played in every British Open since 1991, has a virus. No reason was given for Triplett’s decision.

Corkage Fee

David Feherty said he picked up a wine magazine on vacation and something he read reminded him of Gary McCord and his swing:

“It has a vaguely amusing nose, but a leathery body, it’s not very well rounded, and there is a distant twang of elderly fruit on the finish. Probably should be put down and left there.”

Name Game

The LPGA announced there will be a name change in next year’s event at Wilshire, from the Office Depot Hosted by Amy Alcott to the Office Depot Championship Hosted by Amy Alcott.

That should make all the difference in the world.

Amy Alcott, by the way, was hospitalized overnight Sunday in Ohio after complaining of chest pains before the last round of the Jamie Farr Classic. She was back home in Santa Monica by Monday afternoon and said she never seriously thought she was having a heart attack but decided to get checked out.

As it turned out, Alcott was dehydrated and felt bad enough that her anxiety caused chest pains. She leaves Sunday for a corporate outing in New York and is still scheduled to play next weekend at the LPGA’s Sybase Big Apple Classic.

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The Top 5

The last five winners of which PGA Tour event? (Answer below.)

1. Michael Clark II, 2000

2. J.L. Lewis, 1999

3. Steve Jones, 1998

4. David Toms, 1997

5. Ed Fiori, 1996

(Answer: The John Deere Classic, originally known as the Quad Cities Open. This year’s tournament is July 26-29.)