Week 21 Approach Shots: SAS Championship

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Sep. 24, 2009

A year ago, Eduardo Romero won three tournaments, and only one of his wins -- the Dick's Sporting Goods Open -- was a tight affair. He won that event in upstate New York by a stroke. But in his other two victories, the U.S. Senior Open and the SAS Championship, Romero rolled past the competition. He won the U.S. Senior Open by four strokes, and he came from a stroke off the pace heading into the final round to win the SAS Championship at Prestonwood Country Club by three strokes over Tom Kite. Romero has continued to win in 2009, with a victory at the Toshiba Classic in early March. Interestingly, that is Romero's only top-10 performance of the season. Romero is only 31st in the Charles Schwab Cup standings, but he's 19th on the money list. The top-30 money-earners after Oct. 25 will earn invitations to the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship in Sonoma, Calif.

Quick facts

WHAT: 21st of 26 official Charles Schwab Cup events

WHEN: Sept. 25-27

WHERE: Cary, N.C.

COURSE: Prestonwood Country Club

ROUND 1 TV: GOLF, Fri., 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. ET

ROUND 2 TV: GOLF, Sat., 2 to 5 p.m. ET

ROUND 3 TV: GOLF, Sun., 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. ET

KEY LINKS: Scores | Champions Tour Insider | Tournament site

SCHWAB CUP UPDATE: The top positions in the Charles Schwab Cup race remained unchanged as none of the top-six players in the standings earned points last week at the Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn. Fred Funk still leads Loren Roberts by 57 points, with Bernhard Langer, Larry Mize and Joey Sindelar in the third-through-fifth positions. Jay Haas, who won last week in North Carolina, moved into the top 10 and is in the 10th position. The Charles Schwab Cup, designed to recognize the Champions Tour's leading player, is a season-long bonus-points competition. Players receive points for top-10 finishes at all 25 official events based on each week's money distribution, with $1,000 earned the equivalent of one Charles Schwab Cup point (points are doubled at the five major championships and the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship). The program offers $2.1 million in tax-deferred annuity payouts to the five leading finishers, with the winner receiving a $1-million annuity.

PERNICE DEBUTS: Tom Pernice, Jr., a two-time winner on the PGA TOUR, turned 50 on Sept. 5 and will make his Champions Tour debut at this week's SAS Championship. It marks the third consecutive year that at least one former winner on the PGA TOUR has started his Champions Tour career at the SAS Championship. Last year, Larry Mize made his first start on the Champions Tour at this event and tied for 27th. Two years ago, both Fulton Allem and Mark Wiebe made their initial appearances on the circuit at this event. Wiebe won the tournament just 10 days after turning 50, not only matching Bobby Wadkins' mark as the Champions Tour's youngest winner but also becoming just the 12th of 13 players in history to win in their first start. Allem tied for 36th that week.

FIRST TIMERS: Tom Lehman, Hal Sutton and Mark O'Meara will headline a group of nine players making their first appearances in the SAS Championship. Also playing for the first time in this event are PGA TOUR veterans Olin Browne, Russ Cochran, David Frost, Blaine McCallister, Tom Pernice, Jr. and Bob Tway.

THE CENTURY MARK: With an appearance at the SAS Championship, Leonard Thompson will become just the 10th player in history with at least 1,000 official combined PGA TOUR/Champions Tour starts in his career. Thompson, a native of Laurinburg, N.C., made 651 starts on the PGA TOUR and won three official events. He also has won three official events on the Champions Tour in his 348 career appearances. Miller Barber still has the most combined starts on both Tours with 1,292. Thompson's first event on the PGA TOUR was the 1971 U.S. Open at Merion, where he missed the cut.

HORSE FOR THE COURSE: Tom Jenkins has finished among the top 10 in four of the eight years he's played in the event and has a win at Prestonwood as well as a pair of second-place finishes. Jenkins is the leading money-winner at the SAS Championship, with $774,395. Bruce Lietzke, the only two-time winner of the event, is second in tournament earnings with $708,305.

ACES WILD: After going the first seven years without a hole-in-one, the 2008 SAS Championship had a pair of aces. Morris Hatalsky aced No. 8 in the second round and Tim Simpson aced No. 11 in the final round. It was the only event all of last year where players made multiple aces.

Weather forecast for the SAS Championship

FRIDAY, Rd. 1	SATURDAY, Rd. 2	SUNDAY, Rd. 3
Thunderstorms Temp: 84 high/71 low	Thunderstorms Temp: 80 high/68 low	Thunderstorms Temp: 80 high/67 low

DTN/Meteorlogix is the official weather provider of the PGA TOUR. For more information, click here

SAS Championship snippets

	Strange returns: Curtis Strange, a winner of 17 PGA TOUR events, will make his first appearance on the circuit since mid-April when he tees it up this week. Strange underwent right hip surgery after competing at the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am.
	Course changes: Prestonwood Country Club has re-configured and re-surfaced all of its greens on The Meadows course. The SAS Championship plays its second nine using nine holes from the The Meadows, and the second nine is now an A1 creeping bentgrass surface.
	Roberts rolling: Loren Roberts has finished among the top-five in his last five starts, a first in his Champions Tour career. In addition to wins at the Senior British Open and Boeing Classic, Roberts tied for fourth at the U.S. Senior Open and tied for fifth at both the JELD-WEN Tradition and the Walmart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach.