Columnist Peter Benton: Champions will start Jan. 19

Peter Benton

Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005 | 9:12 a.m.

Peter Benton's golf column appears Wednesday.

Although the PGA tour's 2005 season gets under way this week with the Mercedes Championship in Hawaii, the Champions tour does not commence until Jan. 19 with its MasterCard Championship, which will also be played in Hawaii.

So ... here are a few final notes on the 2004 Champions Tour:

Craig "The Walrus" Stadler, with five victories; $2,306,066 in official earnings (an average of $109,812 per start); a stroke average of 69.30; and 12 top-10 finishes, was crowned the 2004 Champions Tour Player of the Year.

When he won the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am, Mark McNulty became the 11th player to win in his first start on the tour. The last to do so before the native of Zimbabwe was Bobby Wadkins.

Local Pat Laverty earned $4,678 in his only two starts of the year. Not too bad when one realizes that Chi Chi Rodriguez, an eight-time victor on the PGA tour and with 22 wins on the Champions tour, picked up just $4,346 in his seven outings in 2004.

For the seventh time in the past eight years, Hale Irwin earned more than $2 million ($2,035,397.) Irwin also eclipsed the million-dollar mark in official earnings for a record ninth consecutive year.

Mark James became the first European tour player to win a major title on the Champions tour since the advent of the circuit in 1980, when he won the Ford Senior Players Championship.

Doug Tewell was bogey-free in winning the Greater Hickory Classic. He became the 17th player in the tour's history to go an entire event without making a bogey, the first since Morris Hatalsky won the 2003 Columbus Southern Open.

Ed Fiori, Mark James, Peter Oakley, McNulty and Peter Jacobson all won their first Champions tour events in 2004.

There were 20 different winners in 2004, a drop from 2003 when there were a record-tying 25 different winners, including seven first-timers.

Jim Thorpe was the only player in 2004 to successfully defend a title, winning the Commerce Bank Long Island Classic. In doing so, he became the fourth player in tournament history to accomplish this feat, joining George Archer, Lee Trevino and Bruce Fleischer

George Archer is just one appearance away from becoming the seventh member of the tour to make 1,000 combined starts (PGA tour and Champions tour) in his professional career. Other players who have reached that milestone are Miller Barber (1,292), Dave Eichelberger (1,134), Gay Brewer (1,023), Arnold Palmer (1,041), Gene Littler (1,013) and Charles Coody (1,045).