Lee Janzen, at ACE Group Classic, seeks easy move to Champions Tour

 

NAPLES, Fla. – Lee Janzen said it's normal for a golfer to look at his best days to draw from. Well, Janzen has two pretty darn good days to look back at: U.S. Open victories in 1993 and 1998.

Janzen won his first Open at Baltusrol, shooting all four rounds in the 60s, and beating Payne Stewart by two shots. His score of 7-under 203 tied Jack Nicklaus' Open scoring record. Five years later at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, Janzen beat Stewart again, this time by one shot, and did so by coming back from seven strokes behind.

"There's a level of play that I had to have played to win those, and I don't know that it's always just technique," he said. "My technique was way better then than it is now, but there was the mental side where I was able to focus more on every shot, which I would like to do more of. I think it's natural for a golfer to look at his best days to see what he did right and copy it."

Janzen will try to do some copying for his first full season on the Champions Tour this year. He's making his first appearance in this week's ACE Group Classic at TwinEagles Club.

"Everybody out here basically, other than maybe a couple of guys, I played with on the regular tour for many years," Janzen said. "I try to explain to everybody that it's just like a big club, a fraternity, and we get together every week and hang out," Janzen said of the tour.

Janzen knows one of his fraternity members more than well. Janzen and Rocco Mediate played together at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. The two have known each other since 1984.

"That's a long time," he said. "So college we met and we found out that we had similar interests in music and other things, so we've been good friends for quite a while. I've been looking forward to getting on the Champions Tour and a lot of it has to do with being able to hang out with Rocco again."

This week, he'll do more than that. Janzen is staying with Mediate over at nationally ranked Calusa Pines Golf Club, where Mediate is a member.

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"He's like a brother to me," Mediate said. "We've known each other so long."

Janzen is no stranger to Southwest Florida. He played some junior golf in the area, and also spent some time at Tiburon Golf Club, both with swing coach Rick Smith, who had an academy there for years, and winning the 2002 Franklin Templeton Shootout with Mediate. That was actually Janzen's last win; the 1998 Open was his last solo one.

But Janzen is hoping to recapture those winning ways on the Champions Tour. Janzen had a tie for sixth at Pebble Beach among his six starts after turning 50 last August.

"The advice was very similar: Be ready to play," Janzen said. "I certainly didn't show up the first day thinking now it will be easy. I did not have that in my mind at all.

"The regular tour is obviously harder conditions, so a good round out there could be a 68 or 69 on a hard course and ... that's not going to win on the Champions Tour. It's just a mindset of being used to shooting 66 every day, and I haven't shot enough of those in the last few years, so I've got to get used to shooting them again."

His former college teammate thinks that'll happen.

"Lee's going to be do great (on the tour)," Mediate said. "He's hungry."

This article was written by Greg Hardwig from Naples Daily News, Fla. and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.