With a strong opening round, 60-year-old Hall stands tall  PGATOUR.com Editorial Coordinator TIMONIUM, Md. -- In the first round of the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship, the question wasn't who was leading the final major of the season but rather who wasn't.  Though he owns only one Champions Tour win, Walter Hall has chalked up 60 top-10 finishes. (Condon/PGA TOUR/WireImage)
There was 2007 hotshot R.W. Eaks, who earned his first Champions Tour victory in mid-July then erased any lingering doubts about his credibility by earning a second win just two months later. Rookie Mark Wiebe, who has won every Tour event in which he has played (all one of them), moved right back to his favorite spot on top. Charles Schwab Cup points leader Jay Haas, local favorite Fred Funk and putting guru Loren Roberts also sat in their customary positions near the lead. But for the first dozen holes, it was a relative unknown -- at least in the year 2007 -- who led them all. Walter Hall, a man who hasn't won on the Champions Tour since 2001, fired off five birdies in his first 12 holes to take the lead at 5 under before two costly bogeys at Nos. 15 and 17 sent him back into the passel of players at 3 under par. Hall made a 20-footer on the first hole for birdie then parred the par-3 second hole before his group, which was the second to go out in the morning, was called back into the locker room because of fog. Fog had already delayed the tee times once, so the 50-and-over players were forced to warm up, cool down, warm up, cool down -- a process that gets tougher with creaky backs, achy muscles or, in Hall's case, two formerly operated upon bad wrists. "We got off to a good start and I hated to stop, but that's OK. It turned out to be a beautiful day," Hall said. "...The fog sort of rolled in and then we had to quit but the first two holes were fine. We didn't have any issues. The group in front of us, they were in the fairway on No. 3 and they couldn't see the green and that's when we stopped." His two bogeys came long after the fog had lifted in the finishing stretch, which is to be expected on a course that Loren Roberts described as having "birdieable holes early...[but] starting with No. 8 there really isn't an easy hole on the golf course." On No. 15, Hall thought his 7-iron was the perfect club to hit into the steep green but left it about a yard short of the green, so the ball rolled back and settled into a divot. His ball found another divot on No. 16, but a well-played iron shot left him exactly 15 feet from the pin and Hall two-putted to save par. The 17th hole was an even bigger disappointment, since Hall putted first from 46 feet then missed a five-footer to give him a three-putt bogey. If he had made it, he might have held the lead alone. But there's a silver lining -- or on a misty day like Thursday morning, a bright spot of sunshine amongst the fog -- and Hall took the optimistic approach. "Right now I'm leading the Grand Champions division, if we [still] had one," he said, referring to the now defunct tournament-within-a-tournament concept where players over age 60 competed against each other. Hall also headed into the clubhouse on a strong note. He hit a "perfect" drive on No. 18 -- a "really, really hard hole" -- and left a 6-iron pin high for a round-closing par. Hall hasn't finished inside the top-10 since the 2006 Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn, played at an equally hilly venue in his home state of North Carolina. But he got plenty of R&R during the Champions Tour's off week last week and could be headed toward a strong finish. Hall and a group of friends from his club in Winston Salem, N.C., headed to the popular golf and Spring Break locale of Myrtle Beach, S.C., where he claimed he didn't do anything differently that lead to him shooting an opening-round 67. "I didn't practice any harder than I usually do. You're trying to save your energy because this is a hard course to walk for four days. It's going to be a stamina situation for someone like me who is 60 years old. I normally walk when I play but still, this course will wear you down," Hall said. The 60-year-old has performed well in the Baltimore area in the past, especially at the 2002 U.S. Senior Open at nearby Caves Valley Golf Club. Hall was the 36-hole leader at that major championship before posting a final-round 77 to fall into a tie for 11th. "I can remember perfectly. No. 7 was a par 5 and I hit two good shots then I laid it up right in a big ol' divot, didn't get it up on the green and made bogey. Then on No. 9 I plugged my tee shot right up under a lip and couldn't hit it out. Things started going haywire from there," Hall said. "But Caves was a great golf course. This is a beautiful area to play golf in." He has ties to the area, as he attended the University of Maryland for a year before entering the Air Force for a four-year stint. He'd never played Baltimore Country Club before, but had heard "great things" about it from a local doctor who operated on both of his wrists. Hall has just one Champions Tour win as well as a win on the PGA European Seniors Tour at the 1997 Belfry PGA Seniors Championship. He's had an up-and-down career, trying unsuccessfully four times to earn his PGA TOUR card in the 1970s before regaining his amateur status. Hall served as a sales manager for an appliance distributor prior to his professional career, which really took off in 1994 when he played two seasons on the Asian Tour and one on the Hooters Tour in 1996. He joined the Champions Tour in 1997 and tied for eighth in his debut, the first of 60 top-10s in his career. Like fellow 60-year-old Dana Quigley, Hall started a consecutive events streak in 2001 when he went on a two-year run of 85 straight tournaments that ended in 2003. So does Hall think he can carry the flag for the 60-and-over crowd and earn a victory this week? "No, we'll let Gil [Morgan] and Hale [Irwin] do that," Hall said, shaking his head emphatically. "...There are some awfully good players (out here)." |
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