Champions Tour Insider: Forsman catches a break

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Dan Forsman captured his first win on the Champions Tour at the AT&T Champions Classic in Valencia, Calif.

Five shots.

In total, that's all that has separated the five winners of Champions Tour events this year from the runners-up.

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Each event on the 2009 schedule has ended with a 1-shot decision. At the AT&T Champions Classic, Dan Forsman had to work a little overtime Sunday to defeat Don Pooley on the first playoff hole. That's the kind of year it's been so far on the Champions Tour.

Ask no quarter, give none.

Waste shots and pay the consequences.

Catch a break and make the most of it.

Preserve shots and preserve a victory.

Nobody knows that better than Forsman, 50, a Champions Tour rookie who won for the first time in his 12th start.

But based on Forsman's performances since joining the Champions Tour last July at the 3M Championship, a victory wasn't going to be long in coming. He has finished in the top 15 in all four starts this year, including a tie for seventh at the Allianz Championship. In 2008, Forsman had five top 20s in eight starts.

At the AT&T, Forsman turned a tournament hanging by a thread -- OK, it was a string technically but why mince words? -- into what he called a humbling victory. Forsman ran down 36-hole leader Joey Sindelar with a solid final round 66 and then held off Pooley in the playoff.

"To win on the Champions Tour is a huge bonus, a huge success for me," Forsman said. "You come out here and people say, 'Dan, you are young, you ought to be one of the young up-and-comers, you should be able to win out here.'"

It's never that easy and here's why.

"You are battling nerves," said Forsman, who won for the first time since the 2002 SEI Pennsylvania Classic on the PGA TOUR. "You haven't been on the Champions Tour and haven't competed for a victory in a while and you are always wondering how your nerves are going to hold up."

Forsman held up well enough. But what he'd like is to reach another level, to forge a reputation as a guy who won't be caught when he's in the lead.

"There's a whole different world leading a championship through the week," Forsman said. "Ideally, that's where I'd like to be though. I want that feeling of stepping up and having guys know, 'Oh, he's in the lead, a la Greg Norman, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo on down to Tiger, Phil. They are going to execute (when they're leading), they aren't coming back. So you better get with the program, you better execute or you are seeing some dust.

"I'd really like to get to that point. That would be major progress for me."

Forsman's nerves were fine until what he called the "nightmarish scenario" at the finishing hole where his second shot sailed dangerously close to out-of-bounds on the Valencia Country Club course.

"It looked like it was going to be a sinking ship," he said.

But when he arrived on the scene, officials had already used a string -- using it to mark from white stake to white stake -- to determine Forsman's ball was in-bounds. The first signal he had received was that the ball had crossed the white line.

It was his wife, Trudy, who first gave Forsman the thumbs up.

"My wife came up to me about 60 yards short of the railing, the fencing," he said. "She said your ball might be in-bounds. I didn't really allow myself to go there because I'm thinking I have to get up-and-down for six there with my second ball. For a moment, I went well, if it is (safe) great. If it isn't, that's the way it is. Then to get up there and have the officials (say), 'Your ball is in play. The string is touching it.'"

Forsman admitted he thought seriously about laying up on the second shot. He convinced himself otherwise.

"You know what, Dan?" he told himself. "How many chances are you going to get here? You have to go for it. I don't care if I go down swinging. That was my sense. When the marshal said it's out, I went, well, I went down swinging."

He didn't go down swinging. Not this time. The thread didn't break.

And that has Forsman thinking about bigger things now that his schedule will include the biggest events on the Champions Tour.

"I've never really had the chance to win a major on the PGA TOUR," he said. "I would really, really dearly like to be in contention and try to compete for one of those."

Champions Tour Insider notes:

• When the Champions Tour returns next week, Greg Norman will be in the field at Punta Espada Golf Club in the Dominican Republic. It will be his sixth start on the Champions Tour. He has finished T6, T5 and fourth in his last three appearances.

• Joey Sindelar didn't hold on for the victory but his T4 finish continues a solid string of performances -- T7-T2-T4 -- and fifth on the Charles Schwab Cup points list.

• Sindelar tied with Fulton Allem and Ben Crenshaw -- and all three were looking for their first Champions Tour victory.

• The victory moved Forsman to fourth on the Charles Schwab Cup points list with 290 points. Bernhard Langer continues to lead by a wide margin with 617 total points. But the next three spots are separated by only 15 points. Loren Roberts is second (305) with one more point than Mike Goodes, followed by Forsman.