Monday, April 27, 1998 | 9:32 a.m.
FIFTEEN TOURNAMENTS have been played on the PGA Tour so far this year and when Trevor Dodds won Sunday's Greater Greensboro Classic he became the tour's 15th different winner.
Variety obviously is no problem there.
The situation isn't too dissimilar on the LPGA Tour, where eight players have won the 11 events that have been held. Tour money leader Liselotte Neumann added to her portfolio with a victory in Georgia and her play this season comes as a welcome reprieve after Helen Alfredsson and Karrie Webb dominated the previous two years.
Meanwhile, on the PGA Senior Tour it's the same old story. When Hale Irwin won the Las Vegas Senior Classic it only reinforced the belief that he and Gil Morgan -- and Larry Nelson to some degree -- have mopped the floor with their competitors. Of the 11 Senior events already in the books, Morgan has won four and Irwin three.
The tour has become so predictable that the crafty Irwin, at 6-5 in the city's sports books, wasn't even a good bet. Anyone wagering on him didn't figure to get rich on the return.
Yet no one on the tour is crying or singing the blues. There is no uproar, no player-supported drive to somehow handicap Irwin and Morgan in an effort to artificially equalize the playing field.
The typical Senior Tour player seems to accept the situation.
"I can't consider myself on the same level," said Las Vegas runner-up Vicente Fernandez, volunteering a comparison between himself and Irwin and Morgan. It was a revealing admission in that Fernandez, as the fifth-leading money winner on the tour, could have easily said his record and his game speak for themselves and that he's just a fraction behind the two-headed tour monster.
Fernandez, however, takes the view that "for me to play well is good enough." He doesn't register for a tournament thinking he's going to win.
Other excellent players made similar self-deprecating comments over the weekend. Fact is, tour players all but bow in respect when it comes to discussing Irwin in particular and Morgan to a lesser extent.
As a duo, they have crushed their competition so convincingly they've taken the starch out of their supposed adversaries. It's as if 75 of them arrive at an event playing for second or third.
"If I could just find out when (Irwin and Morgan) are not going to play well, that's the week I'd try to play my best," Fernandez said with a smile, when asked what it would take for him to pick up a tour win. Failing to have that extra-sensory perception and the ability to capitalize on command, he's reduced to playing third or fourth fiddle in an orchestra that essentially has only a couple of chairs.
Should the fans be disheartened even if the players are not? And is the tour stuck in a stage where the monotony has become counterproductive?
The answers are no, and no.
By nature, the Senior Tour will always be dominated by the players nearest their 50th birthdays. Irwin's time will pass, as will Morgan's.
Tom Kite will turn 50 next year and so will Tom Watson.
In all probability, they'll give Irwin and Morgan a dose of their own medicine.
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