CRENSHAW GETS NEW CHALLENGE IN SENIORS.

Byline: Dave Shelburne Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The Senior PGA Tour life has proved an elixir for senior rookie Ben Crenshaw.

Not so much for satisfaction on the scoreboard, where the two-time Masters champion has finished no higher than 43rd in his two starts since turning 50 on Jan. 11. But Crenshaw expected new courses, his own lack of tournament fitness and the competitive nature of those grizzled senior sharpies would take a toll on him - at least early in this phase of his golf life.

What he found energizing has been the renewal of old acquaintances and the teeming variety of senior swing styles, a variety he grew up watching and appreciating but saw little of in his final years on the increasingly formful PGA Tour.

The regular tour has been cranking out talented young prospects with picture-perfect swings for more than a decade, and Crenshaw - whose early time on that tour in the 1970s more closely resembled the vagabond days of PGA Tour infancy - is enjoying rekindling memories of his professional golf youth.

``Ours was more of a roving band like it was way back, so this is a continuation of that,'' Crenshaw said Thursday at Valencia Country Club, where he is entered in the SBC Senior Classic that runs today through Sunday. ``In that regard, it makes the relationships a little closer, I think. And it's by design.''

That camaraderie is something Crenshaw said he has been looking forward to and something that has left him feeling rejuvenated even though he has struggled to regain a swing that won him the 1984 and '95 Masters championships and 17 other tournaments on the regular tour.

``Very much so,'' he said of his anticipation for and enjoyment of a career passage that has taken him both forward and backward: ``That's part of my growing up, part of my learning the game with these guys and watching them play.''

The still slender but graying Crenshaw is not only watching again but enjoying a variety he thinks golf fans will enjoy as well.

``The senior tour fascinates me because you see some wonderful individual swings,'' Crenshaw said. ``And I think that's part of the education of people who watch it - that you can play fabulous golf swinging the way Allen Doyle swings at a ball. Don't tell me that man can't play golf.''

No one on the senior tour would, not after Doyle's hockey-style swing earned him senior Player of the Year honors and a tour-leading $2,553,582 in 2001.

``He knows what he's doing and (so do) a lot a players like him,'' Crenshaw said. ``Who would try to swing like (U.S. Open, British Open and PGA champion) Lee Trevino or (three-time U.S. Senior Open champion) Miller Barber?''

Few on the regular tour, where loopy swinging Ryder Cup performer Jim Furyk is a rare exception.

But Crenshaw loves the individualism of players such as Furyk and so many on the senior tour. It's something he learned growing up and learning golf from the late Harvey Penick in Austin, Texas, where Crenshaw and former U.S. Open champion/fellow senior Tom Kite were youthful rivals who benefited from Penick's individual approach to instruction.

``Our old teacher Harvey was brilliant,'' Crenshaw said. ``He said, those fellows, they can play. They know what they're doing. He would never even think about ever changing something like that.

``Now, there's a great difference in teaching these days. It seems to me - I don't know this, but it's just my opinion - that teaching now, there's a basic form of a player and a lot of people teach toward that form. It's almost an impossibility. I would have loved to have swung a club like Payne Stewart or Sam Snead or Tom Purtzer. But how many swings are there like that? It's not there. You have to know what you can do.''

SBC SENIOR CLASSIC When: Today through Sunday. Where: Valencia Country Club, 6,905 yards, par-72. Tickets: Daily general admission $15 at the gate (children under 16 admitted free when accompanied by a paying adult). TV: PAX (today, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.) and CNBC (Saturday-Sunday, 2:30-4:30 p.m.).

CAPTION(S):

2 boxes

Box: (1) SBC SENIOR CLASSIC (see text) (2) SBC Senior Classic