These guys are good.

We're talking about the Champions Tour winners opening their season tomorrow in the MasterCard Championship at Hualalai on the Big Island.

The PGA Tour's young guns teed it off first in the Mercedes-Benz Championship and the Sony Open in Hawai'i, although the winners were hardly young — Vijay Singh (43) and Paul Goydos (42).

Now, it's the AARP set's turn to show their stuff.

And, believe me, they've still got the game.

Unlike the Sony Open, which featured Tadd Fujikawa and six other Hawai'i golfers in the 144-player field, there's none among the 42 players at Hualalai.

So, Scott Simpson, who's about as close to a "local boy" as they come, will have to do the honors for the golf fans here.

The former Kailua resident's wife, Cheryl, graduated from Radford High School. Their children, Brea Yoshiko and Sean Tokuno, grew up here. And, as Simpson likes to remind anyone who might have forgotten, he even played the Ala Wai Golf Course and won the Hawai'i State Open there twice (1979 and 1981).

Simpson played 23 times in the Hawaiian/Sony Open starting from his first year on the tour in 1979. A streak of 20 straight appearances at the Waialae Country Club came to an end in 2000 when he broke his ankle skiing. He also didn't play in the 2003 Sony Open when he lost his fully exempt status and didn't receive a sponsor's exemption.

"I've never missed a Sony Open that I wasn't exempt for," said Simpson, whose PGA career low round of 10-under-par 62 came in the opening round of the 1991 United Airlines Hawaiian Open.

Cheryl probably wouldn't have forgiven him if he had passed up a trip to Hawai'i. The Simpsons now reside in San Diego, his native city.

Simpson even caddied for Parker McLachlin in the past two Sony Opens.

Simpson qualified for the MasterCard Championship with his first Champions Tour victory in the Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach in September.

"It was a fantastic week," Simpson said about his victory at the famous California seaside course. "Everything about it. It was at my favorite golf course, Cheryl and Bill Murray were there. And I knew I was going to Hualalai."

Simpson had never seen Hualalai until this week but had heard raves about the golf course from others, including defending champion Loren Roberts, D.A. Weibring and Craig Stadler, the only PGA member who has played Waialae more times (25) than he did.

Hualalai lived up to its billing, according to Simpson.

"The golf course is fantastic. It's in such perfect condition," Simpson said about the par-72, 7,097-yard layout through the lava fields designed by Jack Nicklaus. "It's not really a hard golf course. If you're hot, you can make a lot of birdies."

Just ask Roberts, whose winning 54-hole total of 191 last year established the all-time Champions Tour record in relation to par.

A seven-time winner on the regular tour, including the 1987 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, Simpson has never won a PGA event in the Islands.

He came close twice, finishing second by one stroke in the 1982 Hawaiian Open to Wayne Levi and runner-up last year to Roberts in the Turtle Bay Championship. Those seconds, though, weren't as heart-breaking as his 18-hole playoff loss to the late Payne Stewart in the 1991 U.S. Open at the Hazeltine National.

"I'd love to win in Hawai'i. I love Hawai'i so much," said Simpson, who will get two cracks at it in successive weeks at Hualalai and Turtle Bay.

"I'll give it my best shot. I almost did last year at Turtle Bay," said Simpson, who finished two strokes back of Roberts, who became the first player on the Champions Tour to win the first three events of the year.

Simpson went on to post eight top-10 finishes and ended up sixth on the money list with $1.34 million in his first full year on the Champions Tour.