Dave Reardon: Seasoned vets hanging with younger crowd

Jan. 13—Golf long ago shed its image as a game just for old people. And, especially at its highest competitive levels, youth usually reigns supreme.

Golf long ago shed its image as a game just for old people. And, especially at its highest competitive levels, youth usually reigns supreme.

But every now and then something happens to remind us life on the PGA Tour doesn't end at 40.

Jack Nicklaus won his 18th major, the Masters, at age 46. Tiger Woods' last win in a major was also at Augusta, in 2019 when he was 43.

Phil Mickelson was 50 when he captured the 2021 PGA Championship.

It wouldn't excite the golf world as much if Rory Sabbatini, K.J. Choi or Stewart Cink were to win this week at the Sony Open in Hawaii, but each of the three veteran Tour pros is positioned after Thursday's first round to make a run at a victory.

Chris Kirk, Jordan Spieth and Taylor Montgomery—all still a long way from rocking chairs and Champions Tour eligibility—shared the lead at 6-under 64 when play was suspended due to darkness.

But the 46-year-old Sabbatini is among the mob of players one shot back at 5 under. Choi, 52, and Cink, 49, are still in the hunt, too, at 66.

If any of those three is the one left standing in the winner's circle Sunday, he will be the oldest to win this event.

Thirty years ago, Howard Twitty turned 44 two days before he won what was then called the United Airlines Hawaiian Open. It was Twitty's third and final PGA Tour win, 13 years after his second. It helped him earn the 1993 PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year Award.

Choi's last PGA win was 12 years ago, at The Players Championship, in a playoff over David Toms.

Before that, Hawaii golf fans will remember Choi won here, in 2008. Second place at Waialae that year ? Sabbatini, three shots behind Choi's 14 under for the tournament. (This was a year after Sabbatini was second at the Masters.)

Sabbatini has six PGA Tour wins. But the last was in 2011, the Honda Classic.

Cink might have the best chance of the three to out-play the 18 younger guns also within two shots of the lead. The most recent of his eight PGA Tour victories came in April 2021, at the RBC Heritage.

Two years ago, Cink was 10 under after two rounds and tied for second here but faltered on the weekend and finished tied for 19th.

He and Choi were among Thursday's early clubhouse leaders.

Cink, who sank a 62-foot birdie putt on the par-3 14th hole Thursday, said Waialae is a course where experience helps.

"I don't know if age has anything to do with it or not. This is not a kind of course you need to be super long. If you hit the fairways it's a short course. You just have to have the expectations in the right place here, " he said. "A lot of good shots aren't going to end up in good places, off the tee especially. You just have to be ready to deal with that, and I've seen guys and I've seen myself even get pretty frustrated here.

"But it's (a ) good kind of course because it rewards some experience and some properly-set expectations."

Cink also knows, however—first-hand—that experience doesn't always win out over youth.

In 2009, he got his first and only major win, outlasting Tom Watson at the Open Championship in a four-hole playoff. Watson was 59—23 years Cink's senior—and attempting to win his sixth Open.