A year ago, John Cook and David Frost extended the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai to dusk with a two-hole playoff that Cook ultimately won with his third straight birdie.
2014 MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CHAMPIONSHIP AT HUALALAI
>> What: Champions Tour season-opening event featuring 41 past tour champions
>> When: From 9:50 a.m. today, Saturday and Sunday
>> Where: Hualalai Golf Club, Big Island (Par 36-36—72, 7,107 yards)
>> Purse: $1.8 million ($307,000 first)
>> Defending champion: John Cook (17-under-par 199)
>> Tickets: $20 daily, $35 all week, 18-younger free with ticketed adults
>> TV (tentative times): Golf Channel, 2-5 p.m. daily, with repeats |
This year on the Big Island, Rocco Mediate is taking the Champions Tour season-opener into Monday for his wedding.
Life is a little different on the Champions Tour, which opens its 35th season today with its longest running tournament. The season-opening event, with a winners-only field of 41, started in 1984 at LaCosta Country Club. It was called the Tournament of Champions and stayed in California through 1994, moving to Puerto Rico for two years before settling at Hualalai in 1997.
Cook, Hale Irwin and Dana Quigley have won twice at Hualalai with Cook — the 1992 Hawaiian Open champion — capturing two of the past three. His win over Frost was the fourth playoff in tournament history, and only the second here.
Irwin is making his 19th consecutive appearance. His win at Hualalai in 2007 was the last of his 45 senior titles. He has won 12 times in Hawaii in his career, counting six Kaanapali Classic and Turtle Bay Championships, the 1981 Hawaiian Open title and three unofficial Senior Skins titles. At 68, he is the oldest golfer here and one of eight 60-somethings.
Those eight, and the 33 youngsters here with them, have combined for 586 wins, including 81 majors. There are nine World Golf Hall of Famers — Irwin, Fred Couples, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite, Bernhard Langer, Larry Nelson, Nick Price, Curtis Strange and Tom Watson.
The numbers are staggering, and so are the numbers these guys have thrown at Hualalai. Eight years ago, Loren Roberts fired 26 birdies and shot 25-under-par 191 to shatter the tour’s scoring record. Don Pooley lost by a shot and shattered it as well. By way of comparison, the wind came up in the third round of the 1990 GTE Ka’anapali Classic. The average score that day was a record 79.205.
The TOC rookies this year are Esteban Toledo, who won twice last year; Mediate, John Riegger, Bart Bryant and Japan’s Khoki Idoki, who won last year’s PGA Championship in his first visit to the United States.
