Columnist Dean Juipe: Tewell steps up to take advantage

Dean Juipe

Monday, April 16, 2001 | 9:58 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

A year ago the Senior PGA Tour rolled into Las Vegas with its collective tongue dragging in fatigue.

In a bizarre bit of scheduling, the tour had hopped from Arizona to Florida to Las Vegas in consecutive weeks, making for a geographic sleight of hand that mystified not only the weary seniors but schoolchildren everywhere.

This year the tour bigwigs found a map and excluded the one-week Florida excursion, and as the players make their way to Nevada for this week's Las Vegas Senior Classic at the TPC at Summerlin, at least they're not arriving with their tanks on empty.

They're coming from Scottsdale and coming off their first major tournament of the year, the Tradition.

But there is a similarity to last year, and it's that Doug Tewell won the event immediately preceding the Las Vegas tour stop. Last year he won the PGA Seniors' Championship in Palm Beach, celebrated the birth of a grandson and likely sleepwalked his way to Summerlin, where he finished tied for 11th behind eventual winner Larry Nelson.

This week Tewell arrives off his Sunday victory in Scottsdale without an additional grandchild but with four wins and far more in career earnings in two-plus years on the Senior Tour than he accumulated in 24 fairly solid seasons on the PGA Tour.

He should still be feeling fresh, having smoked the field at the Tradition and having led from start to blazing finish. He was unstoppable in the final round, taking what had been a two-shot lead at the outset of the day and stretching it all the way to nine after only 12 holes.

Tewell is among the players who are capitalizing on a void that seems to have been created by Tom Watson and Tom Kite, who, to the chagrin of some, are not dominating the Senior Tour as had been anticipated when they turned 50 three months apart in 1999.

Watson, in a somewhat telltale example of what's ailing the Senior Tour, skipped the Tradition (in spite of its major status) to take part in the PGA Tour's Worldcom Classic at Hilton Head, S.C. Competing against the younger guys, Watson missed the cut.

He's not playing in Las Vegas this week. Nor is Kite. Nor is another tour star, Gil Morgan.

The end result: As has been the case for some time, the door is open for players of all types and backgrounds to win a Senior Tour event and finish paying off the mortgage on that second house. The best example: A heretofore perennial nonwinner, Mike McCullough, is among those who has taken advantage this year and is suddenly among the tour's money leaders and most prominent players.

Hardcore golf fans probably don't mind the diversity, yet the TV networks -- and those who add up the gate receipts -- certainly do. ABC, for instance, is probably still peeved today that Watson didn't even enter one of the tour's top events.

Those who pay the freight would rather see a dominant player or two, and, presently, there isn't one.

The trade-off is that journeymen -- and let's put Tewell in here, with all due respect -- are padding their bank accounts while owing Watson and Kite a nod of thanks for being so disinterested.