Major qualifications

5/16/2003

Five golfers with multiple major-championship wins are headed to Inverness Club for the U.S. Senior Open on June 26-29.

Entries for Larry Nelson, David Graham, Hubert Green, Dave Stockton and Andy North were listed yesterday by the United States Golf Association.

Nelson won PGA Championships in 1981 and '87 to go along with a U.S. Open win at Oakmont in 1983.

Graham captured the '81 U.S. Open at Merion, near Philadelphia, two years after scoring a win at the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills.

Green won the 1977 Open at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla., and the '85 PGA at Cherry Hills near Denver.

Nelson, Graham and Green are three of just 17 golfers ever to have won the PGA and U.S. Open championships. Three others from that exclusive group - Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Raymond Floyd - announced earlier they would be in the field at Inverness.

Stockton is a two-time PGA Championship winner and also is a former U.S. Senior Open champion. He won that title at Canterbury Golf Club, near Cleveland, in 1996.

North is among the more improbable of U.S. Open champions, considering that his two wins - 1978 at Cherry Hills and '85 at Oakland Hills - represented all but one of his victories during a two-decade career on the PGA Tour. He only other win came at the 1977 Westchester Classic.

Bill Rogers, the British Open champion at Royal St. George's in 1981, is another major title winner among the 74 golfers, all of whom are exempt from qualifying, who had submitted entries for the Senior Open as of yesterday.

Most of the remainder of the 154-player field will be determined by sectional qualifying tournaments held throughout the United States from June 2-16. One of those qualifiers will be staged locally at Belmont Country Club on June 10.

The list of entries, to date:

Jim Albus, Isao Aoki, Stewart Alexander, Bill Baloh, Dave Barr, John Bland.

Jose Maria Canizares, Bob Clark, Jim Colbert, Ben Crenshaw, Rodger Davis, Jim Dent, Ed Dougherty, *Dale Douglass, Alan Doyle.

Seiji Ebihara, *Dave Eichelberger, David Eger, Vicente Fernandez, *Bruce Fleisher, Raymond Floyd, Fred Gibson, Bob Gilder, Marvin (Vinny) Giles III, Stewart Ginn, David Graham, Hubert Green.

Walter Hall, Morris Hatalsky, Joe Inman, *Hale Irwin, John Jacobs, Tom Jenkins, Tom Kite, *Larry Laoretti, Wayne Levi, Bruce Lietzke.

Curtis Madson, John Mahaffey, *Graham Marsh, James Mason, Terry Mauney, Gary McCord, Mike McCullough, Gil Morgan, Bob Murphy, Larry Nelson, *Jack Nicklaus, Andy North.

*Arnold Palmer, *Gary Player, *Don Pooley, Tom Purtzer, Dana Quigley, Sammy Rachels, Greg Reynolds, Kemp Richardson, Bill Rogers, John Schroeder, Jay Sigel, J.C. Snead, Craig Stadler, *Dave Stockton, Noboru Sugai.

Doug Tewell, Leonard Thompson, Jim Thorpe, Steve Verrato, Bobby Wadkins, Lanny Wadkins, Tom Wargo, Tom Watson, George Zahringer III, Fuzzy Zoeller.

*-Past Senior Open champions