Bean makes debut

Richard Dunn

There are always rookies on the PGA Champions Tour. Sure, some years

are better than others in terms of marquee prestige, but each year

golf fans can look forward to seeing a new face in the Toshiba Senior

Classic at Newport Beach Country Club.

This year, it will be hard to miss Andy Bean, who will soon become

one of the tour’s big boys. Quite literally.

As the newest rookie on the Champions Tour, and making his debut

in the Toshiba Classic, Bean is big in golf. Oh, well, maybe not as

big as Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus or Hale Irwin, but 6-foot-4 and

nearly 250 pounds officially qualifies him as big.

While Bean’s physique might be built for football, he used his

powerful frame in 1985 to lead the PGA Tour in driving distance,

averaging 278.2 yards off the tee. But golf is different now with

technology, including titanium balls that sail with the wind and

travel like rockets. Reaching 300 yards off the tee is common for

players now. Gone are the persimmon woods Bean once helped design,

replaced by space-age metal drivers with graphite shafts and club

heads the size of mail boxes.

With 11 career PGA Tour victories -- the last of which came in

1986 -- Bean is attempting to evoke some of the magic that made him

one of the most feared players from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s,

before he essentially retired from full-time professional golf to

spend more time with his three daughters: Lauren Ashley, 20, Lindsey

Ann, 18, and Jordan Alise, 17.

“The girls are getting older to where they don’t mind me being

away from the house, especially when the boys call,” Bean told

reporters earlier this year.

Bean, who turned 50 on Thursday, lived in Jekyll Island, Ga., as a

child where his father was associated with a golf course. His family

moved to Lakeland, where his father bought a golf course, when he was

15.

With a career victories exemption onto the Champions Tour, the

stakes will be high for Bean, who has career earnings of $3,523,230.

The average purse on tour this year is a record $1.7 million.

Bean best’s season was 1986, when he won $491,938 and captured his

third tournament at Doral.

In his prime, Bean could not only blast the ball, but also had a

great touch around the greens. In 1980, Bean led the PGA Tour in

birdies with 388 and was among the top putters.

“These next few years I certainly hope that my length will be a

factor and will help me because I know I’m going to be able to hit

less club into a lot of these holes than those other guys,” Bean

said. “And my short game is good. “I would just like to go out there

with a bag that’s empty and bring it back every year full of titles.”