The Champions Tour’s season is winding down with five more tournaments to go and the turn this weekend is for the very unique Nature Valley First Tee Open which begins Friday.
It’s a unique tournament in the sense that the tournament to be played at Pebble Beach Golf Links and Del Monte Golf Course includes 81 Champions Tour players, 81 juniors and 162 amateurs.
The tournament serves as a global showcase for The First Tee organization, which promotes golf among the young and needy, and every year brings junior participants, Champions Tour pros and select amateurs together in a Pro-Am format hosted by the Monterey Peninsula Foundation.
The juniors represent 54 chapters of The First Tee and were selected by a national panel of judges that evaluated participants' playing ability and comprehension of the life skills and education learned through their involvement with The First Tee program.
The young golfers are asked to write and file essays, answer an extensive series of questions about their personal lives and their golf.
This tournament represents a unique opportunity for the youngsters to play alongside some of the Tour biggest stars, from whom they can draw an invaluable knowledge and experience, which pardon Master Card, is priceless.
But with the Tour’s closing tournament fastly approaching, the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Harding Park in San Francisco on Sunday November 3, for the Tour players this weekend will be business as usual.
Kirk Triplett, 14th in the Charles Schwab Cup Standings, is the defending champ and he will be challenged by 18 of the top 20 in the standings. Leader Kenny Perry and Kohki Idoki (18th) are the only two players in the Top 20 not playing this weekend.
With Perry needing a major miracle to lose the points lead, all eyes turn to the race for second where German icon Bernhard Langer is currently place and the clear cut favorite to take home the big prize this week.
He is atop the Tour’s money list right now and with his third-place finish in Hawaii last week, he took his number of top 10 finishes in his last nine events to eight. He was the early leader in the standings and should be considered on all lists to contend for the win.
Another player who is red hot and you can look forward to be contending on Sunday is Corey Pavin. He has shot 11 straight rounds in the 60s and his last five starts on tour look like this: T3, T3, T2, T2, P2; add to this that in his previous outing to these starts he finished T9, he is long overdue for a win.
You can never look past Presidents’ Cup Team USA Captain Fred Couples on the Champions Tour. He doesn’t play quite as often as the rest of his peers, but he makes his starts count. Out of 12 starts this season he has finished a superb nine times inside the Top 10 and sits currently fourth in the Schwab Cup standings even though he has yet to win this year.
Duffy Waldorf is right behind Couples in the Schwab Cup standings. His T16 finish last week in Hawaii stopped a streak that saw him finish T4, T4, T3, Solo Third in his previous four starts on Tour. Like Couples he has yet to win this year, but has 11 Top 10 finishes in 19 starts and could breakout for a win anytime.
The defending champion Triplett, who closed with a sizzling six-under 66 in the First Tee championship last year to beat Mark McNulty by two shots, has been playing well lately and looks poised for a shot at a successful repeat here. He has five Top 10 finishes in his last five starts on Tour.
Last week’s winner Mark Wiebe, became a two-time 2013 winner when he beat Pavin in Hawaii last week, this after winning the Senior British Open with a playoff victory over Langer at Royal Birkdale in July, is another player that should not be overlooked this weekend.