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Associated Press 18y

The end of Doral as they know it

MIAMI -- For some players, there is no better feeling than
getting off the plane at Miami International Airport and feeling a
blast of tropical air, a warm signal that the Florida swing is
starting and the Masters is not far away.

Billy Mayfair has played at Doral every year since he was a
rookie in 1989.

"I've always loved this place," Mayfair said. "You're coming
off California, where you're used to wearing sweaters and
turtlenecks. You come here and it's 90 degrees and perfect
greens."

But as he finished the Ford Championship at Doral, Mayfair could
only wonder if his tradition would continue.

Doral will be home to a World Golf Championship next year, a
limited field for only the top 50 in the world ranking and leading
money-winners from six tours around the world. There were only 69
players at Harding Park last year, including Warren Abery, Neil
Cheetham and Jyoti Randhawa.

"If I don't play well the rest of the year, I might not be
here," said Mayfair, who is No. 78 in the world. "That probably
was the most disappointing thing I saw on next year's schedule."

It's the first time a regular PGA Tour stop has been converted
into an elite tournament with a small field. La Costa Resort near
San Diego hosted the Mercedes Championships until it got the Match
Play Championship in 1999, but the Mercedes (winners only) has an
even smaller field.

The PGA Tour has been going to Doral since 1962. Only two other
courses -- Augusta National and Pebble Beach -- have had the same
tournament longer without interruption.

Two-time Doral winner Steve Elkington has come to the Blue
Monster every year since 1988, and he remembers seeing all the
champions on the wall -- Jack Nicklaus, Raymond Floyd, Greg Norman,
Tom Weiskopf, Lee Trevino.

"I figured they played this course for a reason, and they've
played it well for a reason," Elkington said. "I've always like
this tournament. I hope I'm in the top 156 next year."

Elkington, who is No. 61 in the world, apparently confused it
for a 156-man field in the late spring.

"Isn't it top 156? It's top 50?" he said.

He paused, then added, "There's not much we can do about it. I
don't think they'll let you in a World Championship as a past
champion."

Others who have never missed a year since 1989 are Bob Tway,
Paul Azinger and John Huston. None are likely to be back next year
unless they play well and get into the top 50 in the world or the
top 30 on the PGA Tour money list.

"I think it's awful," Azinger said. "You build a history, you
build a tradition at a site, then change it all up. I think it's a
really sad day when an exempt player can't play at Doral."<

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^HELP IS ON THE WAY:@ The Zurich Classic at New Orleans will be
played in seven weeks, and help is on the way to the Big Easy.
Steve Sarro, the superintendent at Vail Golf Club in Colorado, is
leading a group of 30 golf course management professionals and
students to help four golf courses recover from Hurricane Katrina.

They will be in the area all next week, working on bunkers,
spraying herbicides and helping restore English Turn and three
other courses -- TPC of Louisiana, Audubon Golf Course and Brechtel
Golf Course.

English Turn will host the Zurich Classic of New Orleans on
April 27-30.

"What is nice about this industry is we are used to helping
each other out. We are all friends and want to help," Sarro said.
"Our peers have faced significant challenges. Labor is in short
supply, so we saw this as a means to provide expertise in helping
golf courses get back open."

Sarro said he was looking for a way to help, and figured
manpower would be as effective as writing a check to the Red Cross.
He is not sure how much they can do in one week having not seen the
damage.

"What we hope to accomplish is to instill hope in these guys,"
he said. "We want to support them."<

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^TUCSON SHUFFLE:@ Tucson is regarded as merely an opposite field
on the PGA Tour, only this year it turned into something a little
more -- a qualifier for a $5.5 million tournament at Doral.

The PGA Tour has a policy that anyone finishing in the top 10 is
exempt for the following week as long as that tournament is not an
invitational. So when six players not otherwise eligible for Doral
finished in the top 10 at Tucson, Doral's tournament director was
left scrambling.

"We had five or six players that would have been in the
tournament, but weren't in the tournament," Eddie Carbone said.
"There seemed to be a lot more changes this year."

The start of the Florida swing usually is messy because players'
ranking out of Q-school and the Nationwide Tour are reshuffled
depending on how they fared on the West Coast. Bubba Watson went
from 38th to second in the pecking order, and would have gotten
into Doral anyway.

The other top 10s from Tucson who got into Doral were Duffy
Waldorf, David Branshaw, Cameron Beckman, Gabriel Hjertstedt,
Charley Hoffman and Mark Wilson. Only two of them made the cut.

"That's a record for number of players coming out of one
tournament into the next one," said Andy Pazder, vice president of
competition for the PGA Tour. "Usually it's one or two, if any.
But given the makeup of the field in Tucson, and the way the
tournament finished up, we had that large number."

Hunter Mahan slipped all the way to fourth alternate, no chance
of playing. He spent the rest of the week on the range when
everyone else was on the course.

"I've never had this issue before," Mahan said. "I was
boarding a plane in Tucson and they told me I was going to be
fourth alternate. It was a little odd."<

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^DIVOTS:@ Camilo Villegas, 24, was the youngest player to finish
second to Tiger Woods since 19-year-old Sergio Garcia at the '99
PGA Championship. ... If anyone questions the support in Charlotte,
consider ticket sales for the Wachovia Championship -- a sellout on
the first day for Saturday tickets, a sellout on the second day for
Friday tickets, and a sellout the first week for Sunday tickets.<

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^STAT OF THE WEEK:@ Tiger Woods has a larger lead over Vijay
Singh in the world ranking than Annika Sorenstam has over Michelle
Wie in the women's world ranking.<

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^FINAL WORD:@ "It's just a fancy name for a $10 million
event." -- Steve Elkington on the World Golf Championships.

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