COLORADO SPRINGS — As much as Hale Irwin enjoys playing tournament golf, don’t look for the Champions Tour’s all-time victories and money leader to become one of those ceremonial players who hangs around until he can’t break 80.
Irwin, 63, still plays to win. Just as he did four decades ago as an all-Big Eight Conference defensive back for the University of Colorado. Just as he did in claiming three U.S. Open Championships and a total of 20 PGA Tour titles before winning 45 times as a senior.
Now more than a dozen years older than Champions Tour rookies, Irwin completed a U.S. Senior Open practice round Tuesday at The Broadmoor with a bounce in his step and that polite-but-serious demeanor that says he’s ready.
Game face: on.
“You go out here as long as you think you can effectively,” Irwin said. “When is the right time to get out? I don’t know. I still have expenses. I don’t think I’ll go on forever. But I don’t think now is the time for me to be lying down and going away, either.
“This year has just not been a good year at all, for a lot of reasons. My mom dying was one. There’s just been some circumstances outside the ropes. But I feel good.”
Good enough to win?
“I think so,” he replied without hesitation. “There’s no doubt I can hit the shots.”
Irwin hasn’t won since the MasterCard Championship in January 2007. He has only one top-15 finish in 2008. But take note — it came this month in his most recent start, 12th place in the 3M Championship in Blaine, Minn.
Irwin missed the cut in the 2007 U.S. Senior Open at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. But as recently as 2004, he finished second (one stroke behind Peter Jacobsen) at age 59. The oldest U.S. Senior Open champion has been 2006 winner Allen Doyle, who had just turned 58.
“Hale isn’t competing against us or the golf course anymore, he’s competing against Father Time,” 2005 Senior PGA Champion Mike Reid has said. “It’s amazing to watch.”
Born in Joplin, Mo., and raised in Kansas, Irwin went to Boulder High School before becoming a two-sport star at CU. Nobody should add him to a list of players with “local knowledge” of Broadmoor East, however.
Before coming here to refresh his memory during three practice rounds a few weeks ago, Irwin said he had not played this course since competing in the long-gone Broadmoor Invitational while at CU.
“When I came here earlier (this month), frankly, I couldn’t remember some of the holes,” Irwin said. “But you’re talking about over 40 years of tree growth. It’s certainly different now. I’m just like these other guys here.”
Ever the focused competitor, Irwin will be glad when he has ticket orders and other obligations out of the way. He conducted a free golf clinic on the practice range Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a full week for me. I have other things going on,” Irwin said. “No matter where ‘home’ is, when you come back and play in front of home people and family and friends, it’s more difficult; it absolutely is more difficult. Those things can take away from your thought process.”
Polite but serious. No one who knows Irwin would expect anything less.
Tom Kensler: 303-954-1280 or tkensler@denverpost.com
