Champions Tour Insider: How high can Cook go?

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Chris Condon/PGA TOUR

John Cook won twice at the end of 2009 and finished second in the Charles Schwab Cup race.

In two full seasons on the Champions Tour, John Cook has posted 27 top-10 finishes in 49 starts.

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But it wasn't until the last three events in that sequence that Cook signaled he may not yet have achieved his best.

Cook capped the 2009 campaign by winning twice, including a dominating performance in the year-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

Cook made his Champions Tour debut with two events in October 2007, and won the AT&T Championship in his second start. He won that event again in 2008 but had to wait until the very late stages of this year to post another victory, this time at the Administaff Small Business Classic.

Two tournaments later, he won the Charles Schwab Cup Championship and jumped from fifth to second in the season-long points competition. The performances suggest Cook has plenty of upward mobility awaiting him on the Champions Tour. How high can he go?

"Well, that's up to the other 77 some guys that play each week," Cook said.

Not entirely. There is a suspicion that Cook will have plenty to say on the subject and that whatever may have been absent during those near-misses has finally been added to the repertoire.

"I've really never played with a lot of confidence through my career," said Cook, who finished third on the money list behind Bernhard Langer and Loren Roberts.

For Cook, that was an improvement of two spots, up from fifth, from his rookie Champions Tour season.

"I've disappointed myself on a number of occasions," he said. "Eleven wins (on the PGA TOUR) isn't chopped liver, but I had many chances to win some big events and didn't do it.

"This out here is a second chance for that. I feel like I've played as well maybe as I ever have the last year-and-a-half. And it's getting better. Hopefully that window doesn't close."

When Cook, 52, looks around him he sees veterans like Hale Irwin and Gil Morgan still competing in their 60s.

"And I played with Tom Wargo this year, and I went, 'Man, this guy is 67 years old. And can still play, man. He's pretty good,'" Cook said.

"So I keep looking at those guys and saying hopefully if my health stays and I keep my good routine going and keep playing with heart, that window will stay open for a while. Yeah, I do think I can play with the best guys out here for a number years. There's a lot of them and a lot coming out. I just think this tour is going get better and better as we go along."

Cook coasted at Sonoma Golf Club. He got ahead quickly and never looked back, a final-round 69 giving him a tournament record 22-under-par total and a 5-shot victory.

He did it with every club in the bag but -- and this golf truism never fades -- his putting was a key.

Cook felt so comfortable on the putting surfaces at Sonoma that it allowed him to be more aggressive.

"I did make some putts, but the ones that I didn't, that went two and three feet by, I made every one of those," he said. "So I felt really good. I've been working incredibly hard on putting. It's the one thing that I think has really kept me back. I've hit a lot of greens and driven the ball well."

Cook tweaked his putter specs at the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship, where he finished fifth. He flattened the putter a little and added a bit of loft.

"Ever since I did that at Baltimore, I feel like I've putted pretty well since then," he said. "If you don't putt out here, you just don't play. I don't care who you are or how good a ball-striker you are. If you don't putt out here, you will not do well.

"That's just a message to all the guys that think they're going to come out and (dominate) when they get out here. If they don't putt well, they will get run over. You better putt good. I've putted good the last couple months."

And the plan is to keep it up for the next few years.