Posted on: Sunday, January 11, 2004
Stadler enjoying 3-week, 3-isle tour
| • | Appleby putts past Singh to regain Mercedes lead |
| • | Star power gives Mercedes tourney a lift |
By Bill Kwon
Special to The Advertiser
KAPALUA, Maui — There's still a lot of life in the old "Walrus."
As far as Stadler's concerned, he's on a three-week paid vacation in Hawai'i, thanks to a remarkable year in 2003 when he became only the second player ever to win on the PGA Tour and the senior Champions Tour in the same year. Raymond Floyd did it first in 1992.
Winning the B.C. Open a week right after the Ford Seniors Players Championship earned Stadler a spot in the $5.3 million winners-only event at Kapalua to open the 2004 season.
It's a natural segue to next week's Sony Open, the year's first full-field event, at the Waialae Country Club. Stadler's island-hopping won't end there. He also is playing in the MasterCard Championship on the Big Island the following week when the seniors tee it up for the first time this year.
Forget double-dipping. It's triple-dipping.
Too bad Stadler, the Champions Tour rookie of the year, wasn't invited to play in the Champions Skins Game at Wailea, Maui, during the following Super Bowl weekend. It would have meant a month's stay in paradise.
He's looking forward to another three-peat showing here in 2005 when the Turtle Bay Championship is expected to follow the MasterCard Championship on the senior tour schedule.
"He's a lot of fun to play with. He has a good time out there," said reigning British Open champion Ben Curtis, 26, his playing partner yesterday.
"This is fun, I'm having a ball," said Stadler, who shot a 5-under-68 yesterday for a 54-hole total of 219.
"It's a good little thing to play with the young guys and then return to the senior home," said Stadler, not tired at all in traipsing the hilly fairways on the 7,263-yard Plantation Course.
"I hit the ball good today until the second shot at 18," said Stadler, who posted six birdies before hitting one into the left hazard for a disappointing bogey at the par-5, 663-yard finishing hole.
In contrast, Waialae's flat terrain where he has had a lot of memories, some not so fond, should be more to Stadler's liking.
"I've never won there. I wish I had. I had three very good chances," said Stadler, a 13-time winner on the regular tour, including the 1982 Masters.
He lost in a playoff to Corey Pavin in 1987, finished a shot back of Mark O'Meara in 1985 and couldn't make a putt in the final round when David Ishii won the United Airlines Hawaiian Open in 1990.
"The day was bizarre when David won. It was a dead calm day. He shot 72 and won," recalled Stadler, who still hasn't forgotten the day his putts didn't drop even though it was 14 years ago. When he finally made a putt, a one-foot tap-in at 18, he gave himself a sarcastic applause.
Stadler, though, has found that life indeed begins at 50.
Joining the senior tour last June, Stadler won three times, earning nearly $1.2 million in 14 events. He also picked up the largest paycheck of his career ($540,000) in winning the B.C. Open.
It followed a $375,000 payday at the Ford Seniors, enabling Stadler to earn more money in that two-week period than in any single year since joining the tour in 1977.
Besides here and Sony, Stadler plans to defend his B.C. Open title, play AT&T Pebble, the Masters, Players Championship and maybe the Memorial.
Otherwise, it's back to the "senior home" for the "Walrus," who by the way, got his nickname from Jerry Pate when they were teammates on the 1975 Walker Cup.
He might not be among the leaders going into today's final round of the Mercedes Championships — chasing leader Stuart Appleby by 20 strokes — but nobody's having more fun than 50-year-old Craig Stadler.
