KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii » Miguel Angel Jimenez didn’t travel halfway around the globe just to win his second Champions Tour golf tournament in three tries.
Spending another week in the island chain, Jimenez and his wife plan to see the sites, including the Kilauea Volcano and the recent eruption that’s plaguing the island community of Pahoa.
The same Sunday Jimmy Walker was winning the Sony Open in Hawaii, Jimenez was playing golf at Abu Dhabi in a European Tour event, before returning home to Malaga, Spain, for his mother’s funeral. From there he traveled the relatively short distance to Paris, France, before embarking to Los Angeles and then Kailua-Kona.
To give you an idea of just how far that is, from Abu Dhabi to Malaga is 3,532 miles. From Malaga to Paris is just a meager 809 miles. From Paris to Los Angeles is a whopping 5,640 miles and from Los Angeles to Kailua-Kona another 2,501 miles. That one-way journey that required the better part of two days of travel time is 12,482 miles.
Not that Jimenez was complaining, mind you, on this late Sunday afternoon only seven days removed from the United Arab Emirates. He was rewarded with six birdies on the back nine to track down Mark O’Meara and pocket the first-place check of $309,000 that the Mitsubishi Electric Championship had to offer.
That ought to cover the cost of taking a helicopter tour to witness the lava flow that keeps expanding the Big Island’s waistline. The 51-year-old won’t return to the senior circuit until the Biloxi, Miss., stop in March. From there, he will play in the World Golf Championship at Doral and then on to the Masters, where he finished fourth last year.
Currently ranked No. 40 in the World Golf Rankings, he wants to play in enough PGA and European tour events to remain in the top 50 and keep his hopes alive of being on the European team in the 2016 Ryder Cup. Champions Tour events don’t figure into the global rankings.
Jimenez took some time to visit with the local media on Sunday after the trophy presentation was completed. He posed with nearly everyone in attendance before doing a putting demonstration on the 18th green for the Golf Channel and then drinking a glass of wine and smoking a fine cigar.
All that was missing was Jonathan Goldsmith proclaiming, “I don’t always drink wine and smoke a fat stogie on the 18th green at Hualalai Golf Club, but when I do I make sure I have a couple of reporters nearby to chronicle my adventures.”
And make no mistake, this was an adventure for Jimenez, who was still feeling the effects of losing his mother only seven days ago. She had battled a long illness and it had become what Jimenez described as a “quality of life issue.”
When he spoke of her in his rapid-fire version of English with a deep Spanish accent, there were tears in his hazel eyes. He felt her presence on a back nine to remember where he rolled in more putts than most of his senior counterparts. It helped him overcome a double bogey at the par-3 third and what he called “a loss of momentum” that had most observers thinking he was done for the day.
But he cranked it up on Jack Nicklaus’ closing nine holes, tracking down an equally hot O’Meara by birdieing five out of six in one stretch, and then knocking home a “6- to 7-meter” putt as he described it, on 17 to seal the steal from O’Meara’s back pocket.
O’Meara tipped his hat to him, still stunned that his Sunday-best 64 left him all dressed up with no place to go. The bridesmaid of the senior circuit with 15 runners-up, O’Meara needed to birdie at least one more coming in. He didn’t, clearing the way for Jimenez, a winner of 21 European Tour events, to get his second victory on the old boys network.
With glass in hand, he tipped it to his wife and talked about how dear old mom was with him in spirit every step of the way. Now, he can enjoy the mystical experience Hawaii has to offer, before beginning his long journey home.
