Weir taking aim at spot in Tour Championship

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2000 | 10:37 a.m.

With his shirt collar all the way up and a Windbreaker wrapped tightly around him, Mike Weir hardly looked the part of the hottest golfer on the PGA Tour.

Yet looks can be deceiving, particularly when Tuesday's cool and breezy conditions at the TPC at Summerlin required every contestant, range hand and spectator to bundle up in an effort to ward off the unruly conditions.

The extra wraps aside, of the 144 PGA Tour members competing in the Invensys Classic at Las Vegas that opened today at three local courses, none surpassed Weir's showing last week at the Michelob Championship in Virginia. Fending off temperatures that dipped into the low 50s during the final round, he closed with a 64 before losing a one-hole playoff to David Toms.

The second-place finish brought Weir $324,000 and boosted his 2000 earnings to $1,351,379. It also vaulted him from 37th to 27th on the money list, which is significant in that the top 30 on the final list qualify for the plush Tour Championship.

"Obviously I had a good week last week," Weir said, "but if it continues blowing this hard, I don't think it'll matter. The only advantage I might have is that I'm not a bad wind player and I'm striking the ball well."

He does, however, have another slight advantage, one that was apparent in Virginia and may be apparent here if it gets any cooler: He's a Canadian.

"That probably did help me last Sunday," he said. "It was cold out there."

Now a resident of Utah, Weir has one tour victory under his belt and -- coincidentally or not -- it came last year in the Air Canada Championship at Surrey, B.C. So, needless to say, he's pretty good when things aren't so hot.

"It's a new week and everyone starts from zero," Weir said, "and this wind tends to make everything a crap shoot. If you get caught by a gust in the middle of your swing, you're going to go off balance and there's not much you can do about it.

"But I took a big step last week and I certainly want to finish in the top 30. I'm playing pretty well and it was nice to move toward a spot in the Tour Championship, but I know I still have to play well these last few weeks."

Weir, 30, qualified for the Tour Championship last year and finished 23rd on the money list with $1,491,139. (Tying for 19th in the 1999 Las Vegas Invitational helped his cause with $32,500.) A year earlier, as a rookie, he finished with $218,967 and was ranked No. 131.

"I got off to a good start this year but then I only played sporadically for a while and sort of fell back a ways," Weir said, adding that the birth of a second child to he and his wife, Bricia, interrupted his season in April and for a spell thereafter. "Having the baby took away from my focus, but that's fine.

"I got it back."

Weir, a left-hander and a relatively slight man at 5-foot-9 and 155 pounds, amused acquaintances on the driving range at Summerlin by drilling 6-irons into the teeth of a hefty breeze and being amazingly successful at it. This was at a time when several tour pros came to the range only to have second thoughts about hitting any balls.

But with his caddie struggling to even hold the golf bag upright, Weir elected to skip a practice round and, instead, retreated to the parking lot and set a course for the tournament's newest layout, Southern Highlands.

"I'd better go and at least have a look," Weir said before departing. "Maybe we'll take a cart and look around, but I can't see actually going out there and playing the way it is right now."

The hottest golfer in town had met his meteorological match. While his body clock said it was time to play, Mother Nature was interrupting.

There was nothing to do but chill.