Notes: Koch to be inducted into Florida Sports HOF

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The 2012 Champions Tour season is idle until the Allianz Championship (Feb. 6-12) at The Old Course at Broken Sound Club in Boca Raton, Fla. The purse is $1.8 million and the winner will receive $270,000 and 270 Charles Schwab Cup points. Last year, Tom Lehman won by a stroke from Rod Spittle and Jeff Sluman. Lehman went on to win two more times in 2011and was voted the Champions Tour Player of the Year.

RECENTLY

• Champions Tour professional Tom Pernice, Jr. finished T43 at the Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA TOUR, shooting 5-under 283.

• It was announced recently that Gary Koch will be among 13 athletes scheduled for induction into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame in the Class of 2012. Koch, who lives in Tampa, played at King High and the University of Florida. In 1975, he joined the PGA TOUR, where he won six events over two decades. He became a television analyst in 1990 and currently plays on the Champions Tour, where he has three runner-up finishes. The Hall, founded in 1961 by the Florida Sports Writers Association, recognizes athletes and athletic events in the state. The Hall showcases memorabilia from its more than 200 inductees at the Lake Myrtle Sports Complex in Auburndale.

• Champions Tour professionals Brad Bryant and Andy Bean raised money for The First Tee YMCA Par 3 facility based in Lakeland, Fla. at the seventh annual Barkley, Bean, Bryant & Friends Celebrity Skins Game Shootout. With $150,000 raised this year, the event has contributed a total of $1.05 million. Participating celebrities included Charles Barkley (NBA Hall of Fame), Derrick Brooks (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), and LPGA professionals Na Yeon Choi and Sandra Gal, along with Rod Spittle, Jim Thorpe and Mike Hulbert from the Champions Tour.

COMING UP

• World Golf Hall of Fame member Annika Sorenstam will give 36 executive women (nine foursomes) expert instruction at the Allianz Championship Women's Executive Pro-Am on Tuesday of tournament week at the Old Course at Broken Sound Club. The Women's Executive Pro-Am offers women a golf and business networking experience along with the opportunity to play nine holes with a Champions Tour professional. The day will include a Q&A session with Sorenstam followed by a private group clinic with the 72-time winner.

• The Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship, won by Fred Couples at Westchester Country Club in August last year, will be known as the Constellation SENIOR PLAYERS when it is played at Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh, Pa. in June this year.

• Allianz Life will be donating $1,000 for every birdie from 2011 Champions Tour Player of the Year, and Allianz-sponsored golfer Tom Lehman at the Allianz Championship. (Read more here)

• The European Senior Tour Qualifying School was first played in 1993. Since 2001, the event has been played at Pestana Golf Resort on Portugal's Algarve where this week 62 qualifiers will join 13 exempt players. The top six players will earn full Senior Tour cards for the 2012 season and those finishing seventh to 14th will secure conditional playing rights. Former U.S. Open runner-up Mike Donald and Champions Tour regular Dick Mast will be among the contestants.

CHARLES SCHWAB CUP

Dan Forsman, who leads the Charles Schwab Cup after winning the season-opening event, finished 56th in last year's Charles Schwab Cup race, 2,333 points behind winner Tom Lehman.

NUMBERS

310 -- The number of yards John Huston's tee shots averaged during the Mitsubishi Electric Championship. Huston leads the Driving Distance statistical category, seven yards ahead of second-ranked Kenny Perry. The winner of the tournament, Dan Forsman, averaged 288.2 yards and ranked T11.

DID YOU KNOW?

Kyle Stanley, who has yet to win on the PGA TOUR, lost a playoff to multiple TOUR winner Brandt Snedeker at last week's Farmers Insurance Open. The last time the Farmers Insurance Open produced a first-time TOUR winner was 1991 when Jay Don Blake won his lone PGA TOUR title. Blake won twice on the Champions Tour in 2011 and was runner-up to fellow Utah resident, Dan Forsman, at the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai two weeks ago.

ON THIS DATE

1/30/05 -- Hale Irwin became the first player in professional golf to win the same event five straight years and the same tournament six times overall when he prevailed by five strokes over Dana Quigley at the Turtle Bay Championship.

QUOTES TO NOTE

"The stories of bad scores rarely start with, 'I ripped one down the middle.'" -- A humorous observation from Colin Montgomerie, who will turn 50 on June 23 next year.

"I'd like to get a little more fruit out of it than I have in the past." -- Chip Beck, the 2011 Champions Tour Comeback Player of the Year, expresses his desire to improve on last season, which was his best on the Champions Tour.