COLBERT BACK IN THE SWING.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

SANTA CLARITA - Older and shorter but better, smarter and richer.

It's a formula that has worked throughout Jim Colbert's first decade on the Senior PGA Tour, and the spry former Kansas State football player is hoping to stretch that success a little longer.

Colbert, 60, is back at Valencia Country Club this week to defend his title in the SBC Senior Classic, which runs Friday through Sunday on the Robert Trent Jones Sr.-designed course that will play to 6,905 yards and par-72 for the age-50-and-over tour.

He arrived with a continuing appreciation of golf instructor Jimmy Ballard and the power of magnets.

Colbert, who described himself as a better player than ball striker for much of his PGA Tour career, met Ballard at age 35 and credits his teaching for the swing improvement that helped him reverse the traditional golf curve.

``Since I met him, I was a lot better in my 40s than in my 30s and better in my 50s than in my 40s,'' Colbert said. ``Now, whether I am better in my 60s than my 50s, that remains to be seen. But I am still pretty competitive. I certainly have enough length to play.''

Credit that continuing distance off the tee to a decade-long use of magnets, which, Colbert said, have enabled him to play largely free of the back pain that was a constant companion throughout his tenure on the PGA Tour. ``I had so much trouble with my back,'' he said of his time on that tour, which produced eight victories in a span of 17 years but included long chunks of down time and discomfort. ``Every time I played good, I would be off for three to six months.''

Continuity was not all he would have to do without.

``Eventually,'' Colbert said, ``all my discs were gone. I'm a couple of inches shorter.''

But just when he started a senior-tour career about which he had more reason to feel hopeful than optimistic, Colbert discovered magnets. He has worn them on his lower back ever since and swears by them.

``Sometimes my back will get sore,'' he said, ``but it has not blown up once. I have a 30-year-plus history with back problems, so I have been fortunate to be able to play and practice.''

And though, as Colbert once joked, ``I have to be careful not to walk too close to the refrigerator,'' the upside has been amazing.

Last year, he became the eighth player to win 20 times on the senior tour and the 10th to win at the age of 60. He is currently No. 2 on the Senior PGA Tour career-money list, having earned nearly $10 million since turning 50 - almost 10 times his PGA Tour winnings.

Add to that his back-to-back senior-tour Player of the Year titles in 1994 and '95, and there would seem little more Colbert could want. That kind of thinking changed abruptly in 1997, however, when Colbert discovered he had prostate cancer.

``The first thing is that you do not think about golf,'' he said. ``You do not know anything until after the operation and the follow-up tests. When the lab comes back and the tissue and lymph nodes are clean, then you have a terrific chance that they got it all. I did not understand it all then.''

Colbert now makes it a point to help as many men as possible understand the disease. He and Arnold Palmer, who also underwent successful prostate-cancer surgery, have become two of the most outspoken proponents of yearly checkups, since early detection is the biggest step toward prevention.

The appreciation, Colbert said, has been noticeable.

``I cannot walk down one hole without somebody saying something about it,'' Colbert said. ``With what Arnold has done and with what that PGA Tour has done with the Tour for a Cure, we really have brought a lot of people out of the closet. It (prostate cancer) is the exact same numbers as women's breast cancer. The men are now out and active and raising money and getting government subsidies to try to get a cure.''

He'll be striding Valencia this week, chatting with the crowd more often, thanks to the senior tour's push to return to the more fan-friendly ways of its early days - an across-the-ropes camaraderie that has slipped away as purses climbed from $300,000 a week in 1980 to the $1.45 million the seniors are playing for in the SBC Classic.

``That adds a degree of seriousness to the event,'' Colbert said. ``Some of our guys have gotten away from (fan interaction). To be perfectly honest, I have gotten away from it a little bit as well. But thinking back, I played some of my best golf when I was friendly and talking to the gallery on the first tee and in a friendlier atmosphere, without making it life and death again.''

ON THE GREEN

PGA TOUR

Genuity Championship at Miami

Course: Doral Golf Resort and Spa Blue Course (7,125 yards, par 72)

Schedule: Today through Sunday

Purse: $4.7 million ($846,000 to winner)

TV: USA (today-Friday, 1-3 p.m.) and NBC (Saturday-Sunday, noon-3 p.m.)

PGA SENIOR TOUR

SBC Senior Classic at Valencia

Course: Valencia Country Club (6,905 yards, par 72)

Schedule: Friday through Sunday

Purse: $1.45 million ($217,000 to winner)

TV: PAX (Friday, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.) and CNBC (Saturday-Sunday, 2:30-4:30 p.m.)

LPGA TOUR

Takefuji Classic at Waaikoloa, Hawaii

Course: Waikoloa Beach Resort, Beach Course (6,164 yards, par 70)

Schedule: Today through Saturday

Purse: $900,000 ($135,000 to winner)

TV: The Golf Channel (today-Saturday, 2-4:30 p.m., repeat from 8-10:30 p.m.)

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ON THE GREEN (see text)