Masters invite reward for Zurich champ

• By SHELDON MICKLES
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Mar 27, 2008 - UPDATED: 6:37 a.m.

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AVONDALE — The Zurich Classic of New Orleans will pay a record $1.16 million to the winner of the four-day tournament Sunday afternoon, but one perk that comes with it is almost more important to many of the golfers in the 144-man field this week.

In addition to the huge check will be an invitation to the Masters Tournament, which begins April 10. Besides players that qualify in a variety of ways, including the top 50 in the world rankings, the winner from every PGA Tour event since last year’s Masters receive invites.

Among the top players who need to win here or next week at the Shell Houston Open to qualify are Davis Love III, Chris DiMarco, John Daly, Fredrick Jacobson, Carl Pettersson, J.J. Henry, Jesper Parnevik, Rocco Mediate, David Duval, Tom Lehman, and Carlos Franco.

Ironically, Love will get a chance to duplicate what he did in 1995. Needing a win to get into the Masters, Love won the Freeport-McMoRan Classic, as it was known then, at English Turn in a playoff with Mike Heinen.

The par-72, 7,341-yard TPC Louisiana layout is, by most accounts, in good shape as it continues to recover from the hit it took from Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, which forced the Zurich Classic to move back to English Turn for one year in 2006.

More than 1,200 trees were felled and several thousand square feet of the course were under water for several weeks after the hurricane roared through the New Orleans area. But the course stands ready today for the start of its third PGA Tour event and second since the hurricane.

“The response from the players is that they never saw this golf course in this good a shape,” said Bill Reinhardt, Chairman of the Board for the Fore!Kids Foundation. “It’s in fantastic shape, they absolutely love it.

“They’re saying they haven’t seen greens this good all year long. It’s been almost universal from those who played in the pro-am on Monday and those who played a practice round Tuesday.”

As they have for several years, members of the LSU men’s and women’s golf teams served as caddies for executives of the Zurich Financial Services, the title sponsors for the tournament, and some top PGA Tour players during Wednesday’s Classic Pro-Am.

They caddied for groups led by Jim Furyk, the world’s fifth-ranked golfer and 2003 U.S. Open champion, and defending Zurich Classic champion Nick Watney.