Whom will Southland golf fans follow when the Toshiba Classic returns to Newport Beach Country Club this month?
The biggest galleries will crowd around first-time participant John Daly, especially when he tees off for the first time on No. 1. You think Long John will lay up on a relatively straight 325-yard par-4? No way. He leads the PGA Tour Champions in driving distance with a 305-yard average. And, don’t forget, he was the pioneer of the grip-it-and-rip-it style of power golf on the PGA Tour, long before Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day came along.
I also think Daly can reach the 345-yard, par-4 11th, which often plays downwind. And if he’s really daring – duh! – he can try to drive it over the tree-guarded dogleg on the 398-yard, par-4 ninth hole, the way Mark McGwire once did in a Toshiba pro-am, when his gargantuan tee shot stopped a few yards in front of the green. But no matter how Daly plays, he’ll entertain the spectators, which is why he remains a big gate attraction everywhere he goes.
And if Fred Couples plays, he’ll draw his usual thundering herd of a moving gallery. Problem is, Couples, a two-time Toshiba champion and Newport Beach resident, hasn’t teed it up in a Champions event since February and is questionable for the Toshiba because of his chronic back problems.
There also are plenty of other players with Southern California ties to follow, including Mark O’Meara (Mission Viejo High, Long Beach State); longtime Coto de Caza resident Paul Goydos (Long Beach State), who finished fourth in his Toshiba debut last year; longtime Irvine resident Esteban Toledo, who still owns a home in OC; and John Cook, a part-time resident of Corona del Mar who played high school golf in Rancho Palos Verdes.
In addition, there are several UCLA and USC alumni expected to be in the field. The ex-Bruins include Duffy Waldorf, the defending Toshiba champion who set a tournament record with a winning total of 20-under par last year and tied a tournament record by shooting 60 in the second round; Scott McCarron, Brandt Jobe, Tom Pernice Jr., Corey Pavin and Steve Pate. Former Trojans expected to compete include Jeff Hart, Brian Henninger and Craig Stadler.
But if you don’t have a local favorite, or you have an aversion to Daly’s brightly colored Loudmouth pants, you might want to shadow the top star on senior circuit. That would be German ATM machine Bernhard Langer, the runaway leader in the Schwab Cup points race going into the inaugural season-ending playoffs.
“He’s the Tiger Woods of the Champions tour,” Waldorf said last month.
Consider this: Woods has 79 PGA Tour victories and 106 victories worldwide in his record-breaking career, including unofficial tour victories such as the World Cup, PGA Grand Slam and his World Challenge charity events.
Langer, a two-time Masters champion and the only three-time Charles Schwab Cup champion on the Champions tour, has 102 career victories worldwide, including unofficial tour events such as the World Cup and three Father-Son Challenge wins.
Langer’s historic 100th title, according to his web site, came in May at the Legions Tradition in Birmingham, Ala., one of his four Champions victories this season heading into the final month of the regular season, increasing his career total to 29 – second only to Hale Irwin (45 titles).
But those numbers don’t begin to tell the story of Langer’s dominance on the PGA Tour Champions. Gunning for his third consecutive Schwab Cup trophy and fourth overall, Langer was ranked first on the tour in scoring average (68.52), first in greens-in-regulation (78.3 percent), first in scrambling (68.3 percent getting up and down), first in birdie average (4.44 per round), third in putting average (1.740), fourth in driving accuracy (76.1 percent), sixth in sand saves (53.2 percent) and, of course, first on the money list ($2.3 million).
Oh, and there’s one other notable number: 59. No, he didn’t shoot it. He just turned 59 years old. Maybe that’s Bernhard Langer’s next goal – to become the youngest player in history to shoot his age on tour. Don’t bet against him. Follow him.
