July4 Haas

Jay Haas has won more tournaments in the past 2 1/2 years on the Champions Tour than he did in three decades on the PGA Tour.

Although he’s a favorite for this week’s U.S. Senior Open at Whistling Straits, he doesn’t think he’s playing the best golf of his life right now.

It took a while for Haas to come to grips with the idea that it was time for him to leave the PGA Tour behind, and it’s clear that he’s still using the level of play on the “big tour” as his frame of reference for success.

“Now, could I go out and win a tournament out there (on the PGA Tour)? I don’t know if I can,” Haas said Tuesday. “I guess I won’t find out. I’m having the time of my life here, and I think I’m done with that.”

Relatively young on the Champions Tour at age 53, Haas has 10 wins in 50 events. He already has four victories this year, including back-to-back wins last month – not bad for a guy who won nine times on the PGA Tour after turning pro in 1976.

Hale Irwin, the Champions Tour’s all-time leader with 45 career victories, sees Haas as a fellow late bloomer.

Irwin believes he started playing his best golf in his early 50s, and is seeing the same with Haas.

“I hit the ball almost as I wanted to, I made putt after putt,” the 62-year-old Irwin said. “I just played great golf, reminiscent of the way Jay is playing right now.”

Irwin says Haas is radiating confidence going into this week’s tournament.

“You can tell by the way he holds the club, just his demeanor on the golf course,” Irwin said. “He’s very confident in what he’s doing.”

Haas acknowledged he’s confident, but doesn’t quite seem sure what to make of his success on the Champions Tour.

“I will say that I’ve been pretty consistent and I feel probably as confident as I’ve ever felt playing in my career,” Haas said. “But I guess I’ll stop short of saying it’s the best golf I’ve ever played.”

But, Haas added: “If Hale says it, I’ll believe it. He’s the man.”

Haas leads a field that also includes Allen Doyle, who is trying to win his third straight U.S. Senior open; Irwin, a two-time U.S. Senior Open champion; and 2007 Senior PGA Championship winner Denis Watson.

The field has thinned slightly with the recent withdrawals by several recognisable players, including first-year Champions Tour participant Seve Ballesteros, two-time U.S. Senior Open champion Gary Player, 2002 Senior Open champion Don Pooley, Scott Hoch, Raymond Floyd, Dana Quigley and Jim Colbert.

But it’s the course that could end up being the real star – or, if the winds whip up like they did all day on Monday and late in the afternoon on Tuesday, the villain.

Built on a stretch of land about an hour north of Milwaukee that was once an Army base, the Pete Dye-designed course features a layout reminiscent of golf’s Scottish roots.

The rough is gnarly, the bunkers are deep and there’s even a flock of Scottish Blackface sheep roaming the grounds. Some spectators had a hard time dealing with the course’s lumpy terrain three years ago, tripping on the steep berms that line the fairways.

Perhaps most important, there aren’t many trees to block the breeze and the course is perched on the often-windy bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan – giving Whistling Straits its signature “whistle.”

Haas didn’t play a practice round in stiff winds on Monday, but the reaction of other players told him everything he needed to know.

“I saw a bunch of guys coming in shaking their heads and saying that this might be the toughest course they’ve ever seen and ever played and all that,” Haas said, as the walls of an interview tent set up on the course grounds snapped and shuddered in the wind. “I don’t know what the weather is supposed to do, but if we get a steady wind, it’s going to be quite a test.”

Asked where a player can get in trouble at Whistling Straits, Watson cracked, “Walking out of the locker room door.”

Irwin believes the wind will make players throw their strategies out the window.

“I think the real opportunity here, or ‘plan’ if you wish, is to have no plan,” Irwin said. “It’s to be able to lift and shift and make your decisions and have some flexibility in how you play.”