TOUR CARDS ARE AT STAKE IN FINAL QUALIFYING STAGE.

Byline: - Dave Shelburne

Seven current or former area players open competition today at La Quinta in what has been called the most grueling golf tournament in the world - the 108-hole final stage of the PGA Tour Qualifying School.

Only the top 30 finishers and ties after completion of the seven-round event at the PGA West Stadium Course and the Nicklaus Tournament Course will earn playing cards on the 2005 PGA Tour.

The 170-man field includes Santa Clarita Valley residents Bob Burns and Jason Gore, both former players on the PGA Tour.

Former Hart High of Newhall standout Gore, who led Pepperdine to the 1997 NCAA championship and was named to the U.S. Walker Cup team that year, played full-time on the PGA Tour in 2001 and 2003. He had two wins on the Nationwide Tour in 2002.

Burns, an NCAA Division II champion at Cal State Northridge in 1990, won on the PGA Tour in 2002 - at the Disney World Classic - and finished 130th on the tour money list this year.

Other finalists with area ties include former USC star and seven-time tour winner Scott Simpson, who won the U.S. Open in 1987; ex-Westlake High star Charlie Wi, co-medalist in a first-stage qualifier at the Greg Norman Course in La Quinta; and two-time UCLA All-American Jay Delsing.

Two-time PGA tour winner Olin Browne, from Occidental College, and former Pepperdine player Jason Allred also are in the final stage.

--Target World Challenge: Tiger Woods and Fred Couples, who staged a four-hole playoff Sunday before Couples won a record fifth championship in the Merrill Lynch Skins Game, will compete in Thousand Oaks next week in Woods' annual Target World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club.

The 72-hole, stroke-play competition runs Dec. 9-12 with a 16-man field including two-time champion Davis Love III, who outlasted bad weather and a hard-charging Woods to win by two strokes last year.

Before accepting his first-place check for $1.2 million - the biggest of his career - Love withstood a remarkable rally by Woods, who closed with a 65 and cut a 10-shot deficit in the final round to one by sinking six birdies in a seven-hole stretch.