COLBERT'S HOT AGAIN IN STRETCH.

Byline: Dave Shelburne Daily News Staff Writer

He's back.

Jim Colbert, the Senior PGA Tour's energetic 1995 player of the year, admits he's had his problems stringing success together this year.

But when he's been hot, he's been as hard to stop as that battery-powered pink bunny that relentlessly keeps drumming away and marching through everybody.

That was sort of the way Colbert handled the stretch run of the '95 Senior Tour - hammering away to come from behind and win the money title with five top-20 finishes in his final six events.

The satisfaction of that has served as motivation this year.

``I hope it wasn't an accident,'' Colbert said after inconsistent play made this year seem even more of an uphill climb.

But enough weeks of sharpness and enough others of rest have left the upbeat former Kansas State football player again positioned for a strong closing march - only longer this time.

With six tournaments remaining on the '96 tour, Colbert will enter this week's Ralphs Classic at Wilshire Country Club heated up nicely, having finished 13th and first in his past two outings.

His victory Sunday at the Vantage Championship in North Carolina gave him four wins for the year, matching a career high.

Sunday's win also moved Colbert within $200,000 of '96 money leader Hale Irwin, the '95 rookie of the year and three-time U.S. Open champion who for much of this year seemed a lock to dethrone Colbert as player of the year.

Now, it seems, there is a race - and a familiar one.

Colbert trailed Raymond Floyd and Dave Stockton on the money list going into last year's Ralphs Classic, only to heat up the race with a second-place finish at Wilshire.

Three weeks after that, Colbert edged Floyd by a stroke in the season-ending Tour Championship to win the money title with a personal-best year of $1,444,386.

It was enough for Colbert's first player-of-the-year award and not quite enough at the same time. He also wanted to show that kind of play wasn't just a one-season surge.

Part of his plan to prove that was to schedule more rest this year.

``What I didn't do last year was take time off,'' he said. ``I played the last 10 or 12 tournaments.''

This time, he took off nearly a month in late summer and will enter the Ralphs Classic much fresher than last year.

``The plan is to play the last eight and see if I can at least make it exciting,'' he said before the Brickyard Classic. ``I have to be much closer than I am now to do something.''

Now, he's close enough - with $1,245,395 to Irwin's $1,441,584 - especially since Irwin plans to take the next two weeks off and with a $180,000 check awaiting the Ralphs winner.