AZINGER’S CAREER DETOURS 20 YRS AGO IN HAWAII

KAPALUA, Hawaii—Paul Azinger is a Professional Golfers Association (PGA) champion long known as someone who says what he thinks, usually with some degree of clarity, which makes him a good fit as a TV analyst. And that’s what he does now for NBC and at the US Open for Fox.

He could have started much sooner if not for 20 years ago at the Sony Open.

Azinger and NBC host Dan Hicks are working their second straight week for Golf Channel’s telecast of the Hawaii swing. This week brings back strong memories for Azinger, who won the Sony Open in 2000 for his first victory since his recovery from lymphoma, and what turned out to be the last victory of his career.

His strongest recollection is breaking down in tears in the office of Greg Nichols, then the head pro at Waialae, because it was Azinger’s first PGA Tour event since the death of close friend Payne Stewart and two of Azinger’s managers who also were on the private jet that crashed.

“Tears were pouring out of my eyes,”Azinger said.“And I just said,‘I walk out here and it’s like life goes on, like that tragedy never happened.’And Greg said, ‘I guarantee you they’re all thinking about it. But you just can’t hear them and you can’t see them.’And I just snapped out it.”

Equipped with a belly putter that soon became the rage—and got the attention of rules makers who eventually outlawed the stroke to use it—Azinger shot 63-65 and was on his way to a wire-to-wire victory.

It was relevant in other ways.

Azinger revealed last week that CBS Sports had talked to him about taking over in the booth from Ken Venturi, who was nearing retirement. Azinger was 39.

“And then I won,” Azinger said. “And it was after Payne died, and I didn’t know what to do. I still thought I had a little game left in me. I wanted to win because I hadn’t won after I got sick and all that. And then when I won, I didn’t really see myself doing it [television] for a while .... It was the right thing at the time.”

That Sony Open landed Azinger a spot as a captain’s pick for the Presidents Cup, and captain Curtis Strange picked him for the 2001 Ryder Cup, which was postponed a year because of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

But Azinger never won again. He had only one other runnerup—to Tiger Woods by seven shots at the Memorial in 2001—and eventually switched over to TV in 2005.

wOrLD HANDICAP sysTeM

LEADING golf authorities spent some seven years coming up with a modern set of rules. It took about that long to develop a handicap system everyone in the world can use.

The World Handicap System is new this year, and American golfers were able to start posting scores on Monday. Some handicaps were bound to change slightly because the system now takes the best eight scores from the most recent 20 rounds (down from 10 scores).

The idea was to consolidate various handicap calculations from around the world into a single index that applies in every country.