ShareThisNow that 45-year-old Vijay Singh is out for at least five weeks to repair a damaged knee, who among the PGA Tour's older players might replace him to show that age poses little barrier to success in golf? How about Davis Love III and Ernie Els, both playing at the Sony Open this week in Honolulu? In recent years, they've all but dropped out of the conversation about major players.
Consider Love first. He'll turn 45 on April 13, the day after the Masters ends. Love needs to get himself into the top 50 in the world rankings before the tournament to qualify, and he made a significant move in that direction during the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Kapalua, Hawaii, last weekend.
Love tied for second place behind winner Geoff Ogilvy. Sure, he was six strokes behind, but his strong play built on his finish last year. Love won the season-ending Children's Miracle Network Classic in Orlando. The win propelled him up 90 spots to No. 76 in the rankings.
After he won, Love said something that occurs to most players after they've amassed tens of millions of dollars and plenty of trophies. He'd just won his 20th PGA Tour event, joining Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Singh as the only active players to reach that number. That he did so testified to his desire and his ability to compete.
"I always questioned: 'Am I doing the right thing? Why am I still doing this?'" Love said.
Love's win in Orlando set him straight and on a direct course to the Masters. His finish last weekend moved him to No. 54 in the rankings, so it's looking more and more as if he'll be at the Augusta National Golf Club come April. Maybe he'll win his first Masters and second major tournament. Love won the 1997 PGA Championship.
It's not as if he's had a lousy career since then. Love's has nine Tour wins since his major. But after a victory in 2006, things started deteriorating. He had some physical problems, including kidney stones and torn knee ligaments after stepping into a hole. He also fell into another hole from which some golfers never emerge.
"I got into that trap of, if I'm going to be perfect, I'm going to work so hard, I'm never going to hit it bad again, and got wrapped up in mechanics," Love said. "It took me a while to get back going the other way. But I'm doing a lot better job of managing my time to where I'm spending more time on the short game and wedge and all that kind of stuff."
That stuff included working with mental coach Bob Rotella, who wrote the popular book "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect.'' True, but come on. Love's a tour pro. If he can't get it perfect, who can? The same reasoning, or lack of reasoning, applied to Els.
Els, 39, won the 1994 and 1997 U.S. Opens and the 2002 British Open. He's won 16 PGA Tour events in his collection of 64 wins around the world. But there was a jarring lull before he won the Honda Classic last March, his first PGA Tour victory in 3-1/2 years.
That was also the week when Els said publicly that his five-year-old son, Ben, is autistic. Els had been dealing not only with a knee that he'd injured while sailing with his family in 2005, but with trying to understand and cope with his son's condition. Els decided to make the situation known and to form a partnership with the organization Autism Speaks.
"That's been more important, basically, than anything else," Els said last week of his son's condition. "With anything else happening, I've not gone totally off the planet, so I have to feel really good about that, too. You guys report on golf all the time. You don't report on the whole picture. You ask me about golf all the time."
Els, now ranked No. 10, hit on an important point there. There's more to life than the often-consuming game of golf, even for PGA Tour players. On the other hand, it can be only a good thing for the tour that veterans such as Els, who tied for sixth place at Kapalua, and Love have started the season in strong form.
Yes, they're 39 and 44, respectively. But this is golf, not hockey or football. Consider them mature players, willing and obviously still able to compete at the highest levels. That could mean at the Masters, which is three months away, but already on these major winners' minds.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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