Champions take their turn teeing it up in Hawaii

HUALALAI, Hawaii >> Following the youth movement for the last two weeks may be a bit jarring for local golf fans now turning their attention to the senior circuit.

The PGA Tour Champions start 2017 today with the winners-only $1.8 million Mitsubishi Electric Championship played on the pristine Hualalai golf course located adjacent to the Four Seasons Resort along the Kona Coast.

The Jack Nicklaus-designed layout has the truest greens on tour, or so say the seniors fortunate enough to play here year in and year out. Duffy Waldorf is the defending champion of the event that invited 48 of the best senior golfers on the planet.

The old guys are welcoming a new member in David Toms, who opened his 2017 campaign at last week’s Sony Open in Hawaii. Unlike senior counterparts Fred Funk and Vijay Singh, Toms didn’t make the 36-hole cut at the first PGA Tour full-field event of the calendar year.

The 60-year-old Funk didn’t survive the 54-hole cut and. although Singh played through the weekend, he didn’t show up in time for his Tuesday pro-am round and was subsequently disqualified. Those close to the Champions tour believe he thought he was playing in only one pro-am on Wednesday, but that was not the case, so Singh won’t be a part of this elite field.

Joining Funk, Toms and Waldorf are 10 golfers already in the hall of fame, including Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Hale Irwin, Fred Couples, Colin Montgomerie and Bernhard Langer, the latter who was named the PGA Tour Champions Player of the Year, an award the 59-year-old German was pleased to win.

“To earn the Jack Nicklaus award six times is an incredible honor,” Langer said of his player of the year award. “The level of competition on this tour is outstanding, and each year I’ve had to improve areas of my game in order to win consistently.”

Langer enters 2017 tied for second with Lee Trevino with the most Champions tour wins with 29. Irwin is first with 45. Langer is trying to win his fifth career Charles Schwab Cup title and fourth in a row. Since joining the tour in 2007, Langer has captured the Schwab Cup (the FedEx Cup equivalent of the senior circuit) in 2010, 2014, 2015 and last year. He posted two top-10 finishes in the cup playoffs to keep fellow European Montgomerie from winning the season-long title.

Langer won four times last year and had four runner-up finishes as well en route to pocketing a little more than $3 million in single-season earnings for the second time in his career. Other top names playing this week include 2015 champion Miguel Angel Jimenez and John Daly. Toms is also playing here for the first time. He is the first of four talented rookies who can join the Champions tour this year. The other three are Jose Maria Olazabal, Jerry Kelly and Steve Stricker. Stricker will be the Presidents Cup captain this September and plans to play a lot of PGA Tour events.

Davis Love III was scheduled to play here and at last week’s Sony Open, but broke his collarbone while snowboarding nearly three weeks ago. As for Waldorf, he beat Tom Lehman last year with a 25-foot birdie putt at the last and didn’t hoist another trophy in 2016. Lehman will not play here this year because of surgery he had on his elbow.