While the Champions Tour had last week off, not all of the players did. Bernhard Langer spent the week on the PGA TOUR and challenged at THE PLAYERS Championship before finishing in a tie for 15th. Fred Funk also competed at THE PLAYERS, but missed the cut.
• The Regions Charity Classic has always drawn a strong list of celebrities to its pro-am and this year is no exception. Expected to compete this week are Charles Barkley, Bobby Bowden, Jeff Fisher, Vince Gill, Joe Namath, Steve Spurrier and Joe Theismann, just to name a few.
• Since the Regions Charity Classic moved to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Ross Bridge in 2006, the event has known only one champion -- Brad Byrant. Bryant will return this week looking to claim his third consecutive Regions Charity Classic title. Only seven times in the history of the Champions Tour has a player won the same event three consecutive years or more.
• One more on Brad Byrant: When he won the Regions Charity Classic in 2006, he set a Champions Tour record that will be tough to break -- he hit 53 of 54 Greens in Regulation with his only miss by four inches.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Last year Fred Funk won on both the Champions Tour and PGA TOUR. He had six top-10 finishes on the Champions Tour in 2008 and was 77th in FedExCup points on the PGA TOUR.
This year has been a different story. Oh sure, Funk's still done well by most players' standards. He won the first event of the year on the Champions Tour and made his first five cuts on the PGA TOUR in 2008 before missing his last three.
Come on, the guy turns 52 in a month and he's playing almost every week on either the PGA TOUR or Champions Tour. Those stats are pretty impressive, right?
Not to Funk. He knew he was in a, pardon the pun, funk. He knew he could do better. But this nagging right knee problem -- he frequently had to get his knee drained it was so bad -- may have been holding him back since last October or November.
"My game kept getting worse and worse," Funk said. "I kept trying to play with it over the last three months but they have been a downhill battle.
"They have been an uphill battle," he quickly corrected. "My game has gone downhill and I've been battling to get back."
HOOVER, Ala. (AP) -- Brad Bryant suspects there's no better place to fix his game than this tournament. He's ready to go, heavy rain and all.
Bryant has won the Champions Tour's Regions Charity Classic the past two years since the event moved to the Robert Trent Jones Trail course from across town. He has three second-place finishes but no wins in 10 events this year.
Andy Bean hasn't forgotten how to pull off a dramatic victory. Bean managed to save par on No. 18 after hooking his drive left and bogeying the previous hole, holding on for a 2-under 70 and a one-stroke victory over Loren Roberts on Sunday in the Champions Tour's Regions Charity Classic.
It was only the second win in 5 1/2 years on the 50-and-over tour for Bean and his first since the Greater Hickory Classic on Oct. 1, 2006. That one capped a 20-year drought since his 11th PGA Tour victory.
Bean, who had held or shared the lead after the first two rounds, pulled himself out of trouble on the final hole when his drive nearly hit a hospitality tent some 230 yards from the hole with a bunker in the way. He landed his second shot 21 feet from the hole, though, and two-putted for par and the $255,000 winner's check at Ross Bridge on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.
Regions Charity Classic May 16 - 18
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