Johnny’s Quest Begins With Senior Tour Debut

For a remarkable four-year run, Johnny Miller was as good as anyone who ever played, winning two major championships and 14 other tournaments in a spurt of heart-stopping golf.

Coming along at the peak of Jack Nicklaus’ career, Miller gave Nicklaus all he could handle before a series of nagging injuries and a numbing case of the putting yips knocked Miller back to mere mortality.

Now, in another one of those reminders that time passes, Miller - the one-time shaggy-haired blond with the bold game who won the 1973 U.S. Open with a final-round 63 - plays his first senior tour event.

“I’m playing enough to let people know that I’m still around,” Miller said in Park City, Utah, where the Franklin Quest Championship starts Friday. “If I get off to a good start I feel I know how to handle myself.”

Miller turned 50 in April but his career as a golf announcer for NBC delayed his senior debut until now. And the debut comes in Utah where he was a star at Brigham Young.

“Deep down, I want to do well,” Miller said. “If I can finish in the top 10 each week, I’ll be happy.”

He will also make a lot of young players happy if he does well.

“I plan on giving all my senior earnings to junior golf,” he said. “I hope some of the other guys might do something like that.”

For four years, Miller was the equal of Nicklaus. From 1973 through 1976 they each won 16 tournaments. Miller had two major championships during that run - adding the 1976 British Open - and Nicklaus had three.

Miller won eight tournaments in 1974. That mark has been surpassed only five times since the tour began in 1916 and not since Sam Snead won 11 times in 1950.

And when he led the money list in 1974 it was the only time between 1970-81 that someone beside Nicklaus or Tom Watson led the list.

Miller, voted into the PGA Tour Hall of Fame last year, has a reputation for clever, blunt honesty as a TV commentator. But he eventually must decide whether to play golf or talk about golf.

“I have a decision to make between now and 2000,” Miller said. “My contract with NBC goes between then. I’ll probably play five events this year and next.”

But for now, Johnny Miller is back on the golf course. And for at least this week it will feel a little bit like 1974 for Miller and all his fans.

Barnes looks for three-peat

Brian Barnes begins his hunt for a third consecutive Senior British Open title today at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Portrush, Ireland, against a field that includes fellow U.S. Senior Tour player John Bland.

Others chasing the $97,000 top prize are two-time winners Bob Charles of New Zealand and Gary Player of South Africa, as well as 1994 champion Tom Wargo of the United States.

Barnes’ main challenge should come from Bland, who has won more than $2.5 million in the last 20 months playing in the United States.

Weibring shoots for GHO defense

D.A. Weibring today opens defense of his Greater Hartford Open title in Cromwell, Conn.

Cloudy skies and rain are forecast for the first two rounds, which Weibring won last year in a rousing finish, overcoming blustery winds and a steady drizzle.

The 1996 GHO title was Weibring’s first since his career was abruptly interrupted when he was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a muscular condition caused by a virus and marked by suddenly recurring paralysis on one side of the face.

“I was fortunate the last day last year it was overcast,” Weibring said. “Bright sun has an effect.”

Weibring, 44, will be vying against a field weakened by the timing of last week’s British Open. Only three of the PGA’s top-10 money-winners are competing for a share of the $1.5 million GHO purse: Brad Faxon, Mark O’Meara and Scott Hoch.

Weibring, who is 138th on the money list, hasn’t won since he finished four strokes ahead of Tom Kite last year at the TPC at River Highlands. His lone top-10 finish in 1997 was a seventh-place tie at the Kemper Open.