War of Gods on Green

Golf is the most conspicuous example of the phenomenon of `the rich get richer and the poor get poorer`. Top rankers can earn tremendous amount of extra money in various invitation tournaments even after the regular season.

The 2001 PGA Grand Slam of Golf at Poipu beach GC (par 72), Hawaii, is a representative case. The purse is one million dollars for this tournament and this year`s four major title winners have a 36-hole contest. The winner prize is 400,000 dollars and the last place player also can earn 100,000 dollars.

U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen (South Africa) shot a 6-under-par 66 with one eagle and four birdies to take a one-stroke lead over Masters champion and PGA money leader Woods contending for his fourth consecutive title in this event.

If European tour money leader Goosen wins this event, he will earn 900,000 dollars this week including the prize 500,000 of last week`s EMC World Cup in which he participated with Ernie Els.

However, nobody can anticipate who will win the trophy, since, PGA Championships champion David Toms (USA) recorded a 4-under-par 68 in spite of a double bogey in the par-3 11th hole.

British Open champion David Duval (USA) fell away from the leading group early on. His poor round disappointed the fans who expected that four major champions would have a closest contest up to the final hole.

Duval shot double bogeys on the fifth hole and the par-3 seventh to record a 4-over-par 76. He went out of bounds on the fifth and into the water on the seventh.

Young-Sik Ahn ysahn@donga.com