SENIORS OPEN: There's a novel incentive on the European Seniors Tour where any player scoring a hole-in-one is rewarded with bottles of fine wine. The largesse is awarded on a simple mathematical basis. If the feat is recorded on a hole measuring 205 yards, for instance, the player gets 205 bottles of Hardy's, and so on.
Given that many of the players on the circuit have matured like fine wine, it's a rather appropriate gesture. And, if anyone should doubt that players get better as they get older, then the case of Bruce Fleisher, the undisputed favourite for the €310,000 AIB Irish Seniors Open which starts at Adare Manor Hotel & Golf Resort today, would quickly solve any argument.
Since joining the US Seniors Tour in 1998, Fleisher has won more money each year than he managed in an entire US Tour career that spanned almost 30 years and 400 regular events. In all that time, he won only one title - the New England Classic - but he has hardly looked back since moving on to the senior circuit, taking 14 titles in the US. "I've said all along I have come a long way, and I don't know the reason why," he remarked when winning the US Seniors Open at Salem in Massachusetts last year.
Fleisher confessed that winning that major was akin to "shaking a monkey off my back". As a winner of the Irish Seniors Open two years ago, but unable to defend last year, the American, in a way, is chasing back to back titles, although Japan's Seiji Ebihara is the actual defending champion. Fleisher is one of those extremely impressed with the course here. "There are several great holes and you're going to have to golf your ball really well to win," he said, while Ebihara described it succinctly as "difficult, very difficult." This is the third tournament on the European Seniors Tour this season and the strong field also includes Ian Stanley, winner of the British Seniors Open last year, and 11 Irish players, headed by Christy O'Connor Jnr.
O'Connor, who missed all of last season because of injury, has played seven times in the US so far this season and returns there on Monday next for a stint of another six tournaments. "I'm still building up my leg but it is great to be back competing," said O'Connor, who is the touring professional for the resort. Can he win? "If I finish one ahead of Fleisher, I won't be far away." Fleisher, it seems, is definitely the man they all have to beat!
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