This Week: US Senior Open

The Champions Tour is in a stretch of three majors in four tournaments: The U.S. Senior Open this week, the Senior Open Championship last week, and the Jeld-Wen Tradition coming up in a couple weeks. That beats 2009, though, when the same three majors were back-to-back-to-back.

Bernhard Langer won the Senior British last week at Carnoustie, with hardly a tree in sight (although plenty of heather and gorse). This week, the players can definitely see the forest of trees that tightly line Sahalee Country Club in Washington state. It's a course whose majestic trees one led Colin Montgomerie to call it the prettiest place the pros play. (Which might make Sahalee the only thing about America Monty likes.)

The defending champion is Fred Funk, whose straight driving will come in handy again this week. One player who would dearly love to win this week is Fred Couples, a local boy who has long been the biggest champion of Sahalee. And Couples still leads the Champions Tour money list.

Prior to Langer's win last week, the most recent senior major winner was Tom Lehman, who won the Senior PGA in late May; Larry Mize won the Montreal Championship two weeks ago. Nick Price, who might have been a contender, withdrew. Corey Pavin, runnerup to Langer at the Senior British, is another strong contender.

See the U.S. Senior Open tourney page for trivia and notes.

See also:

• U.S. Senior Open winners