Toshiba now features Fantastic Four

The Toshiba Classic’s player field just got stronger, as Bernhard Langer, Loren Roberts, Jay Haas and Fred Funk have committed to play in the event March 1-7 at Newport Beach Country Club.

Langer, the 2008 Toshiba Classic champion and 1985 and 1993 Masters champion, swept the Champions Tour Player of the Year award, Arnold Palmer Award (money list champion) and Byron Nelson Award (low scoring average) in 2008 and 2009. Roberts, meanwhile, won last year’s Charles Schwab Cup points title for the second time in three years.

Roberts (Senior British Open), Funk (U.S. Senior Open) and Haas (Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship) represent three of the Champions Tour’s five major champions in 2009. Together, the quartet owns 35 Champions Tour titles in the last four years.

Further illustrating the recent Champions Tour dominance among this foursome, Haas was the 2006 and 2007 Champions Tour Player of the Year and Arnold Palmer Award winner and the 2006 Charles Schwab Cup points champion. Haas won the 2007 Toshiba Classic with a tournament-record score of 19-under-par 194 and was denied from becoming the Classic’s first back-to-back winner after losing to Langer in an epic, seven-hole playoff minutes before sundown.

Langer, the 10-time European Ryder Cup member and 2004 Ryder Cup captain, was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002 and was named the inaugural No. 1 player in the world when the Official World Golf Rankings were introduced in 1986. Also the Champions Tour Rookie of the Year in 2007, Langer tallied eight Champions Tour titles in three years.

Born in San Luis Obispo, Roberts owns four major championships from 11 Champions Tour wins and established his presence among the Tour’s balance of power in his first full Champions Tour season in 2006, when he became the only player in Tour history to open a season with three straight victories.

Haas expects to return to NBCC after a year’s hiatus. The 14-time Champions Tour winner withdrew from last year’s Toshiba Classic in order to stay home South Carolina and follow his daughter’s run to a state high school basketball championship.

Funk, an eight-time PGA Tour winner and five-time Champions Tour winner, is one of the most personable players in golf with a knack for high performance on the largest, most competitive Champions Tour stages. Of his last eight Champions Tour majors, he has won twice (2009 U.S. Senior Open and 2008 JELD-WEN Tradition) and placed runner-up three times (2009 Senior British Open, 2008 Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship and 2008 U.S. Senior Open). He tied for fourth place in last year’s Toshiba Classic.

In 2007, Funk became the third player ever, after Raymond Floyd and Craig Stadler, to win on the PGA and Champions tours in the same year. He led the Turtle Bay Championship wire-to-wire and won by a record 11 strokes, and then won the PGA Tour’s Mayakoba Golf Classic.

Argentina’s Eduardo Romero is back to defend his Toshiba Classic title. The Toshiba Classic also received prior commitments from World Golf Hall of Famers Isao Aoki, Hale Irwin (the Toshiba Classic’s only two-time winner, in 1998 and 2002), Tom Kite, Larry Nelson, Nick Price, Lanny Wadkins and Tom Watson, as well as players with Orange County ties like Corona del Mar resident John Cook (runner-up in the 2009 Charles Schwab Cup standings) and former Mission Viejo resident Mark O’Meara, a 2009 Toshiba Classic runner-up. He is also a former Costa Mesa City Championship winner.

The $1.7 million Toshiba Classic, the only Southern California event on the Champions Tour, awards a $255,000 winner’s check.

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— From staff reports