Bad Timing, Good Money

He’s won as many U.S. Open championships as Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Tom Watson combined and more official money than anyone who has ever teed up a golf ball.

Yet Hale Irwin remains, perhaps, the most underrated player in the hallowed history of his sport.

That kind of thing tends to happen to polite, unassuming and bespectacled young golfers, which Irwin was when he turned pro nearly 32 years and laser eye surgery ago. Especially when they graduate from football-factory universities and reach the pinnacle of their careers at the same time Jack Nicklaus is winning every meaningful tournament and some strapping young buck named Johnny Miller is shooting 63 at Oakmont.

Call it bad timing, if you will. But spare Irwin your sympathy.

With the fortune he’s made on the PGA and Senior PGA tours - which totals more than $17.1 million - he can do without the fame.“I don’t regret it,” Irwin said of his lack of notoriety during a phone interview earlier this week, “because there was nothing I could do about it.

“First of all, I achieved much of my success at the very height of the Jack Nicklaus era, the Lee Trevino era and when Gary Player was still playing well and Arnold Palmer was still a factor. Then Johnny Miller came on with his run of successes.

“And let’s face it,” said Irwin, “the guy who came out of Colorado wearing thick-rimmed eyeglasses - even though he could play some golf - was never going to achieve the same notoriety as a blond guy out of California. It just simply wasn’t going to happen.”

So Irwin, a former NCAA golf champion and All-Big Eight Conference defensive back for the Buffaloes, quietly went about winning 20 events - including three U.S. Opens - and nearly $6 million as a 30-year regular on the PGA Tour.

He won his first U.S. Open in 1974 and in 1990, at the age of 45, became the oldest Open champion by defeating Mike Donald in a playoff at Medinah.

Today, he is the dominant player on the Senior PGA Tour, where he has won almost $11 million and 28 events, including this year’s U.S. Senior Open.

Irwin, who turned 55 in early June, is playing this week in the Instinet Classic in Princeton, N.J. In two weeks, he will make his first trip to Spokane to participate in the Pro Classic 2000 at The Creek at Qualchan Golf Course, where he will once again share the spotlight - this time as a co-headliner with PGA Tour veteran Kirk Triplett.

He expects to arrive with his “A Game” in tow.

“I’ve been playing very well lately,” said Irwin, who made the cut in last month’s U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and surprised nearly everyone but himself with a final-round 69 that left him tied for 27th. “And, no, I don’t mind going back and playing with the younger guys. I really don’t.”

Irwin admits, however, that he is not as comfortable among the young lions of golf’s newest generation, as he is with the familiar names and faces on the Senior PGA Tour.

“The difficult part for me is not so much that I can’t compete, it’s going back and trying to identify with these young people,” he explained. “I don’t know these guys, and that makes a big difference. Having been away from it for awhile now, I feel a little uncomfortable whenever I go back; a little out of my element.”

But he refuses to concede that today’s PGA Tour players - with the exception of maybe one - are better than those of his generation.

“I think golfers from every generation claim they had to play uphill and into the wind on every hole,” Irwin said. “And every generation probably thinks it was better.

“Today’s players are good, but if you tell me someone’s better than Jack Nicklaus, or that someone’s better than Lee Trevino or Gary Player or Arnie Palmer, then I’ll have a pretty good argument with you.”

Irwin said he has also noticed that today’s young players have a different approach to playing, mainly because of the massive purses being offered at each Tour stop.

“The young people these days are playing for a ton of money,” he explained. `And think that many of them have accepted the fact that even mediocrity will be rewarded.

“There are a handful of players out there that seem to put winning ahead of just making money, but most are happy with just the money. Years ago, you found more players who were interested in winning and achieving and becoming the best, rather than just making money.”

It’s understandable, then, that Irwin feels more at ease stealing money from the pockets of his more familiar adversaries on the Senior PGA Tour.

“It’s not as intense an environment as the regular tour,” said the twotime Senior Tour player of the year. “But then, most of us that are 50 and over have probably mellowed out a little bit.”

As for the notoriety, it’s still probably not at the level Irwin deserves. “But a lot more of it has certainly come my way as a Senior player,” he said.