Welcome to the Champions Tour, finally

Richard Dunn

Andy Bean couldn’t wait to turn 50 years old and play golf on the PGA

Champions Tour, but the tour made him wait an extra week. He’ll make

his debut at the Toshiba Senior Classic this weekend at Newport Beach

Country Club.

Bean, who has been chomping at the bit to play, turned 50 on March

13, a Thursday. If he had turned 50 a day sooner, the tour said, he

would’ve been able to make his first Champions Tour appearance in

last week’s SBC Classic at Valencia Country Club.

“I told them I wanted to [play]. I told them I wouldn’t take any

money -- just let me play,” Bean said Wednesday after his Toshiba

Senior Classic Pro-Am round, only his second time on the Newport

Beach golf course. He played a media pro-am round on Tuesday.

“I’m chomping at the bit any time I can’t play. Just playing (this

weekend) is going to be fun. It will be serious, but fun.

“I’m the new guy on the block this week,” he said. “I’m just

trying to fit in there and try to make some birdies for people to

watch, then everybody will be happy.”

As the latest rookie on the Champions Tour, Bean will draw his

share of attention. But he’s pretty big in golf, anyway, at 6-foot-4

and nearly 250 pounds, which officially qualifies him as big.

Bean’s only other competitive appearance this year came at Doral

on the PGA Tour. He realizes the stakes on the Champions Tour are

high.

Bean, with a career victories exemption onto the Champions Tour,

has career earnings of $3,523,230. The average purse at a Champions

Tour event is a record $1.7 million in 2003. (The Toshiba is $1.55

million.)

Bean best’s season was 1986, when he collected a total of $491,938

and won his third tournament at Doral. This year’s winner of the Ford

Championship takes home $900,000 of the $5 million purse.

“In 1977, I came down [to Doral],” Bean said, “and the funny thing

is that when I won the golf tournament, I think I won $40,000. What

is that, about 20th place, 25th place now? I mean, my goodness,

coming in here, you are playing for $5 million.”

In his heyday, Bean could not only blast the ball, he had a great

soft touch around the greens. He led the PGA Tour in birdies with 388

in 1980 and was consistently one of the top putters.

Add to his physical talent a burning competitive desire befitting

the big redhead. Gary Player told a story of first meeting Bean years

ago at a tournament in Houston. The former University of Florida

Gator towered over Player and said: “You aren’t going to beat me, you

sawed-off little runt.”

The two players laugh about that now, but Bean is infamous in

Canada for something that wasn’t so funny. At the 1983 Canadian Open

, he was so fed up at missing a short putt that he lay the shaft of

his putter on the green and swept his tap-in into the hole.

Unknowingly, Bean violated Rule 14-1, which states that the ball

must be struck with the head of the club only. It cost him a

two-stroke penalty. He went on to lose the tournament by -- that’s

right -- two strokes.

“I hope I’m going to be smarter,” Bean said. “These next few

years, I certainly hope that my length will be a factor and will help

me because I know I’m going to be able to hit less club into a lot of

these holes than those other guys. And my short game is good. I would

just like to go out there with a bag that’s empty and bring it back

every year full of titles.”

While Bean’s physique might be built for football, he used his

powerful frame in 1985 to lead the PGA Tour in driving distance,

averaging 278.2 yards off the tee. But golf is different now with

technology, including titanium balls that sail with the wind and

travel like rockets. Reaching 300 yards off the tee is common for

players now. Gone are the persimmon woods Bean once helped design,

replaced by space-age metal drivers with graphite shafts and club

heads the size of mail boxes.

With 11 career PGA Tour victories -- the last of which came in

1986 -- Bean is trying to evoke some of the magic that made him one

of the most feared players from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, before he essentially retired from full-time golf to spend more time with his

three daughters: Lauren Ashley, 20, Lindsey Ann, 18, and Jordan

Alise, 17.

“The girls are getting older to where they don’t mind me being

away from the house, especially when the boys call,” Bean said.