SAS Championship

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Sutton likes Champions atmosphere

Hal Sutton competed at the highest level of golf for 24 years before he retired in 2006 and stepped away from the PGA Tour.

He remained retired until this year, exchanging early tee times for breakfast with his children. He enjoyed being a dad and didn't think twice about the grind he had left behind.

Not until his daughter told him he needed to play again. With a little reluctance, he listened to her and has since pulled his clubs out of the bag.

Golfer makes 1,000th start today

Today at the SAS Championship, Leonard Thompson makes his 1,000th career start in a professional golf tournament, marking 40 years of avoiding bunkers, counting birdies and hoisting trophies.

He remembers the details of a career spent following a little white ball around the world.

"A lot of missed putts," said Thompson, a Laurinburg native who made his first start at the U.S. Open in 1971 and tees off this morning at Prestonwood Country Club, along with 86 of his fellow Champions Tour golfers.

SAS on solid ground

Mike Stevens was sitting in a ballroom at Prestonwood Country Club, at a pre-tournament function for the 2008 SAS Championship, when he first heard the news.

Lehman Brothers, the leading U.S. investment bank, had filed for bankruptcy.

"None of us had any idea about the impact that would have," Stevens, the president of the Champions Tour, said Tuesday. "And not just on sports. On our lives."

Quail Hollow gets Tiger

With the announcement Friday that Tiger Woods will play in the Quail Hollow Championship next week, the field will be among the strongest of the year on the PGA Tour. Along with Woods, the top four players in the world golf rankings -- No. 2 Phil Mickelson; No. 3 Sergio Garcia and No. 4 Geoff Ogilvy -- will tee it up at the Quail Hollow Club.

It will be Woods' fourth appearance at Quail Hollow, where he won the Wachovia Championship in 2007 but was unable to defend because of knee surgery.

"Anytime you're fortunate enough to get Tiger, it takes everything up a notch," tournament director Kym Hougham said.

Quail Hollow's final holes a death march

For all that happens around the course in the Quail Hollow Championship this week, the tournament will likely be won or lost on the closing three-hole stretch that has ranked among the most difficult finishing stretches on the PGA Tour each of the last six years.

The 16th, 17th and 18th holes -- nicknamed the "Green Mile" -- has largely defined who has won and who hasn't in the tournament's colorful history.

"You have to suck it up and hit five or six great shots coming down the stretch there," said Trevor Immelman, who lost a sudden-death playoff to Jim Furyk here in 2006 after three-putting the 18th hole in regulation.