Hale Irwin: 'At 66, I'm still learning'

RYE, N.Y. -- At 66, Hale Irwin hasn't been grandfathered into the field at the Senior Players Championship, the last major of the Champions Tour season.

Irwin is here at the Westchester Country Club this week because he is the most successful player in the history of the senior tour with 45 victories, giving him lifetime status.

It's been a while since he's won, going back to 2007. But this season he's jumped up in two senior majors, leading the Senior PGA in the last round before falling to fourth, and finishing tied for fourth in the Senior Open, where he shot his age for the third time this year (he posted a 65 just before his 66th birthday).

His past three seasons have been winless and frustrating, and in the offseason he tried to adjust his perfectionist mindset.

"Mentally I was not prepared to play the kind of golf you have to play here," Irwin said Tuesday. "Maybe I was trying to cut things too fine . . . I had to open up the funnel a little bit, let more in [both] good and bad, and separate once it got in. Not worry too much whether [my shots] were perfect or not perfect. That took the edge off the anxiety of hitting the perfect golf shot. Gives you the freedom to make a better swing . . . Now at 66, I'm still learning."

While being in the funnel seems to be working better now than being in the tunnel of his younger days, the ability to bring energy to the course every day is a challenge.

"The aging process diminishes some of that," he said. "Your priorities change, as we all know. My grandchildren are my number one things in my life. I couldn't say that 10 years ago because they weren't around. A lot of my career is in the rearview mirror, it's back there. I still want to perform. I will always want to do my best, whether it's being a grandparent or a golfer. The energy to do that is more difficult to conjure up."

The focus that once came so naturally now, without notice, can vanish.

"I find myself having those senior siestas out there," he said. "At the Senior PGA at Valhalla, I had the lead in the last day, playing in the sixth hole, had the ball in the middle of the fairway and walk off with double bogey. Next hole had the ball in the middle of the fairway, 62 yards from the hole on the par five, and I make six . . . I find myself saying, 'Where did I go?' That's the hardest thing to maintain, that mental discipline."

Kenny Perry, in his second season on the Champions Tour and still looking for his first win, marvels at Irwin's ability.

"Hale Irwin still looks like he can play football," Perry, 51, said. "Sixty-six years old and still playing tremendous. He still seems happy. He aggravates me to death. I love him for it. He's a fireball. He still wants to beat everybody."