Notes: Full-field season under way at Allianz

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The Champions Tour heads to Boca Raton, Fla., where The Old Course at Broken Sound will host the Allianz Championship Feb. 7-13. The purse will be $1.8 million and the winner will receive $270,000 as well as 270 Charles Schwab Cup points. Last year, Bernhard Langer holed an improbable bunker shot for eagle at the first extra hole to defeat John Cook in a playoff after both players had tied at 17-under.

LAST WEEK

• Tom Lehman shot an opening-round 65 at the PGA TOUR's Waste Management Phoenix Open and finished best of the Champions Tour players in the field, with a tie for 37th. Fred Couples was T41, while Mark Calcavecchia, Kenny Perry and Fred Funk all missed the cut.

• Bernhard Langer will be the official Ambassador to the Berenberg Bank Masters, a new event on the European Senior Tour, to be played at Cologne GC on June 17-19. It marks the Tour's first visit to Germany after a 10 year absence.

• Four former U.S. Amateur champions played an exhibition match at Quail Ridge CC in Boynton Beach, Fla., last week and raised $12,500 for Bethesda Healthcare System. John Harris (1993 champion) and Vinny Giles (1972) defeated Bob Murphy (1965) and Jay Sigel (1982-83), 3 & 2. All but Giles went on to win on the Champions Tour -- Murphy, 11 times, Sigel, 8, and Harris, once.

• LPGA legends Beth Daniel and Meg Mallon hosted the Bethesda Hospital Foundation Pro-Am in South Florida. The duo, who took over as hosts following a 40-year stint by Champions Tour member Bob Murphy, recruited 19 LPGA Tour players, Champions Tour members Murphy, Dana Quigley and Jay Sigel for the cause. The pro-am benefits the Bethesda Memorial Hospital & Centers of Excellence. Daniel estimated the pro-am raised at least $100,000 this year.

COMING UP

• The Allianz Championship is the first full-field event of the Champions Tour season. Since 2000, only one player who claimed a win in the first full-field event has failed to finish among the top-30 money-winners. Jerry Pate, who won the Turtle Bay Championship in 2008, was the only player to not earn a spot in the top-30 list. However, Pate's year was limited to only 10 starts due to surgeries on his knee and shoulders.

• Jim Colbert, Champions Tour Player of the Year in 1995 and 1996, will reach a milestone when he tees it up at the Allianz Championship. Colbert will be making his 500th career start on the Champions Tour. Only eight other players have reached that mark -- Miller Barber (603 starts), Dale Douglass (599), Jim Dent (545), Walt Zembriski (527), Harold Henning (520), Orville Moody (513), Rocky Thompson (506) and Jim Albus (505).

• Winning the Allianz Championship has translated into a trip to the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship for each of the four previous champions. Here's where the tournament's former winners have ended up on the final Charles Schwab Cup standings in the year of their victory in Boca Raton -- 2007/Mark James/24th, 2008/Scott Hoch/9th, 2009/Mike Goodes/24th, 2010/Bernhard Langer/1st.

• Bernhard Langer, the 2010 Allianz Championship winner, is seeking Champions Tour history in 2011. Langer will be bidding for his fourth consecutive Jack Nicklaus Trophy, awarded to the Champions Tour Player of the Year.

• John Cook will enter this tournament with a string of 12 straight rounds in the 60s which ties him with Fred Couples (2010) for the second-best streak in Champions Tour history. Hale Irwin holds the mark with 13 straight in 1999.

• Lee Rinker, who lives in the Jupiter area, will be making his Champions Tour debut after finishing T2 at the 2010 Champions Tour National Qualifying Tournament in Coral Springs.

• The Allianz Championship will feature a women's executive pro-am and a kids' fun zone located near the back of the practice range. A Wine & Golf Experience will be held on Friday evening. The running and fitness community will also benefit with the Fairway 5K, a 3.1-mile run that will wind around much of the perimeter of The Old Course at Broken Sound. It will be held before the start of the second round on Saturday and will end with entrants running up the 18th fairway.

• Two notable multiple major championship winners celebrate birthdays this week -- Sandy Lyle (1985 British Open, 1988 Masters) will turn 53 on Wednesday, Feb. 9, and Greg Norman (1986 and 1993 British Open) will be 56 on Thursday, Feb. 10.

• Mark O'Meara competes on the European Tour this week, at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic where he won in 2004.

NUMBERS

62 -- The number of players who posted sub-par rounds during the second round of the 2010 Allianz Championship, just one shy of the all-time Champions Tour record for rounds under par in a single round (63/Final Round/2000 Gold Rush Classic). Sixty-two players also finished under par in the third round of the 2003 JELD-WEN Tradition.

ON THIS DATE

2/7/03 -- Dale Douglass becomes just the fifth player with at least 500 appearances on the Champions Tour when he begins play at the Royal Caribbean Classic.

2/11/73 -- Arnold Palmer wins the Bob Hope Classic for his last PGA TOUR victory.

2/12/79 -- Ground breaking ceremonies are held at TPC Sawgrass.

2/13/83 -- Isao Aoki holes a pitching wedge from the rough for an eagle-3 on the 72nd hole to defeat Jack Renner at the Hawaiian Open. He becomes first Asian player to win on the PGA TOUR.

QUOTES TO NOTE

"One time in high school a kid broke his hand but didn't know it until the ride home because his hands were numb all day. That's cold." -- Tom Lehman, from Minnesota, compares the cold weather that caused frost delays during the early rounds of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

"Sometimes I still pinch myself when I'm the one that gets to walk around the ropes and go to the first tee." -- Rod Spittle still finds it hard to believe he is now fully exempt on the Champions Tour after winning the 2010 AT&T Championship.

"He really cares, even though he might seem very nonchalant, like it really doesn't matter. It does matter to him. He wouldn't be a champion otherwise." -- Bernhard Langer's take on Fred Couples, who challenged Langer for the Charles Schwab Cup in 2010.