Notes: Irwin chases records; Kite's Texas drought

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The Champions Tour heads to The Woodlands CC (Tournament Course) in Houston, Texas for the Insperity Championship presented by UnitedHealthcare on October 3-9. The purse is $1.7 million and the winner will receive $255,000 and 255 Charles Schwab Cup points. Last year, Fred Couples shot a back-nine 29 in the final-round to pass a faltering Corey Pavin and eventually win by seven strokes over Mark Wiebe, equaling the largest winning margin of the year.

LAST WEEK

• Kenny Perry, playing with a heavy heart after the death of his 59-year-old sister Kay on Saturday night, won the SAS Championship for his first Champions Tour win by one stroke over Jeff Sluman and John Huston. Perry's sister died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center after a long battle with breast cancer two years to the day after his mother Mildred passed away at age 79.

• Perry's SAS Championship win made him the 18th different winner on the Champions Tour this year and the third consecutive first-time winner, marking the first time since 2004 that the Champions Tour had three straight first-timers win events.

• On the 2011 Champions Tour, the winner has now come from the final grouping in the last seven tournaments beginning at the Senior British Open.

• The Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf, the long-established Champions Tour team event played at the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf resort & Spa, has been selected as the "Event of the Year" by the Greater Savannah Sports Council.

• PGA TOUR veteran Dave Hill died last Tuesday in Jackson, Michigan. The 74-year-old had suffered from emphysema for several years. All six of Hill's Champions Tour wins came in his first three years on the Tour from 1987-'89. Hill played a total of 226 events on the Champions Tour where his last full season was 1995.

• Champions Tour professional Mark Mouland claimed his first European Senior Tour victory and his first win in 23 years when he snatched a one-stroke win over American Mike Cunning at the Portugal Senior Open.

CHARLES SCHWAB CUP

• Perry earned 315 Charles Schwab Cup points for his win at the SAS Championship and increased his season-long Schwab Cup total to 871 points on the season (14th).

• Tom Lehman continues to lead the 2011 Schwab Cup race with 2,135 points. Mark Calcavecchia picked up 53 points at the SAS Championship and remains in second with 1,737 points. Peter Senior (1,645) and John Cook (1,570) round out the top four places in the season-long standings.

• Lehman will be making his third start at this week's Insperity Championship after having finished T4 in 2009 and T9 last year.

• Hale Irwin is currently 26th in money earnings this season. If he finishes the regular season among the top 30, 66-year-old Irwin would be the oldest player to ever compete in the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship by more than three years. Gil Morgan is the oldest at 63 years, 1 month, 4 days (2009 season).

COMING UP

• Four players in the Insperity Championship field have been ranked No.1 in the Official World Golf Rankings -- Fred Couples, Tom Lehman, Bernhard Langer and Nick Price.

• The Insperity Championship will partner again with the Houston affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. In conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, volunteers will be wearing pink shirts on Saturday, October 8 to help raise awareness for breast cancer. Fans are also encouraged to wear pink when they attend the tournament on Saturday. Pink pin flags will be displayed on each of the holes for Saturday's round. Since the first Insperity Championship in 2004, more than $6 million has been donated to charity.

• Jay Haas might be a player to watch this week. In his six appearances at the Insperity Championship, Haas has finished T5, first, T4, T6, T2 and T24. In 16 of 17 career rounds he's posted under-par scores and is a cumulative 59-under-par in this tournament.

• Bernhard Langer is the only player to win consecutive Insperity Championships (2007, '08). John Cook is the last player to defend a title on the Champions Tour, claiming his second straight Charles Schwab Cup Championship at the close of the 2010 season.

• The Dave Marr Award will again be presented at a special dinner during tournament week. Recipients of the Dave Marr Award, named for the winner of the 1966 PGA Championship, include: Arnold Palmer (2000), Brian Henning (2001), Miller Barber/Don January(2002), Ed Seay (2003), Ben Crenshaw (2006), Dan Jenkins(2007), Larry Nelson (2008), Tom Watson (2009) and Fuzzy Zoeller (2010).

• The Champions Tour "Tees for Charity" is a hands-on, unique fundraising project in its third year at the Insperity Championship. Each of the oversized golf balls on tees have been decorated and autographed by Champions Tour professionals and their wives before being auctioned to raise funds for Golfers Against Cancer.

NUMBERS

• 64 -- The number of combined Champions Tour wins by the six past champions of the Insperity Classic (Larry Nelson, Jay Haas, Mark McNulty, Bernhard Langer, John Cook and Fred Couples).

DID YOU KNOW?

• Tom Kite has never finished outside the top-30 on the single-season money list since he's been a member of the Champions Tour. He's currently 42nd with two events remaining.

• Kite has never won a PGA TOUR or Champions Tour event in his native state of Texas.

• The Insperity Championship is the only full-field event on the Champions Tour that has been played at least five years without yielding a hole-in-one.

ON THIS DATE

• 10/5/97 -- Less than a month after playing bogey-free for 54 holes to win in Missouri, Hale Irwin does it again. Using a second-round 62, he edges Dave Eichelberger by one stroke at the Vantage Championship. His victory earns him a check for $225,000 and pushes his season earnings past the $2 million mark, the first Champions Tour player to do so.

• 10/6/96 -- Just 11 days after turning 50, Gil Morgan becomes at the time the youngest winner in Champions Tour history at the Ralphs Senior Classic in Los Angeles.

• 10/7/01 -- Hale Irwin wins the second of what would be six straight Turtle Bay Championships when he finishes three strokes ahead of John Jacobs in Hawaii.

• 10/8/00 -- Jim Thorpe wins his first Champions Tour title with a three-stroke victory over Bruce Fleisher at The Transamerica in Napa, Calif., ending a victory drought of 14 years.

QUOTES TO NOTE

"Knowing we were playing in the backyard of Australia, I wanted to hopefully load up the team with as many Aussies as I could." -- Greg Norman explains one of the reasons he selected Robert Allenby and Aaron Baddeley as captains picks for the International Presidents Cup team at Royal Melbourne in November.

The Schwab Cup is really important but you can't really win the Schwab Cup today. I'm not oblivious, I know what's at stake, but I don't think you can ever do anything well if you're thinking about something that's a month into the future." -- Charles Schwab Cup leader Tom Lehman talks about the difficulties of focusing on one day at a time.

"You're older than dirt, but you're not in it yet." -- The response from one of Tom Kite's friends when Kite told him he was about to play his 1,000th combined PGA TOUR/Champions Tour event.

"There's this endless supply of 50-year old rookies that keep coming at you. It's like a treadmill; it just keeps coming and coming and coming. In this particular case there's no on/off button, it just keeps coming. So I'm going to try to stay on that treadmill as long as I can." -- Kite shares his thoughts on what it's like competing at age 61.

"I changed my complete putting style. Like they said, the first step to insanity is doing the same thing (over and over) expecting different results." -- Chip Beck follows Albert Einstein's theory. Beck's change to his putting style has seen him improve from over 30 putts per round in 2009, to less than 29 putts per round this season. He has two top-10 finishes in his last four starts.

"Guys still want to win. It doesn't matter if you're 50, 60 or 30. To guys our age, winning was more important than the money." -- Champions Tour rookie Jim Gallagher, Jr.explains the competitive atmosphere of the Champions Tour.