Simpson Looks Back to Greener Days : Golf: His only major victory--the 1987 U.S. Open--came at the Olympic Club, site of this weekend’s $3.5-million Tour Championship.

SAN FRANCISCO —  Scott Simpson is not favored to win the $3.5-million Tour Championship that begins today on the Lake Course at the Olympic Club.

The top 30 money winners on the PGA tour this year are in the event and Simpson is 26th on the list.

Simpson, however, may have one advantage over the prestigious field.

He won the U.S. Open in 1987, the last time it was played at the Olympic Club. He beat Tom Watson by one stroke.

“I remember every hole of the last round,” Simpson said.

And, if he didn’t, he has been reminded recently with television highlights of his victory, the only major event he has won in a tour career that began in 1980.

“It was my biggest accomplishment in golf,” Simpson said. “It was a thrill to win it.”

As for any advantage he might have in an event that pays the winner $540,000, Simpson said, “If (having won the U.S. Open) is an advantage, it would be a small one,” pointing out that he hadn’t played the course until he won in 1987.

Temperatures have been in the high 80s, even reaching 90 degrees, unseasonable in the Bay Area.

“The weather is like the Bob Hope tournament (in Palm Desert),” Simpson said.

Simpson says that the winner will have to shoot 10 to 12 under par for the four-day tournament.

Asked to evaluate the course, he said, “It’s not real long (6,800 yards), no water and only one fairway bunker.”

However, he added that the tree-lined, sloping fairways and small greens make it a formidable challenge.

It’s a course that has had some memorable events.

Jack Fleck, a little-known player, beat Ben Hogan in a playoff here in the U.S. Open in 1955.

In 1966, Arnold Palmer blew a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play and eventually lost the U.S. Open in a playoff with Billy Casper.

Nick Price, Paul Azinger, and Greg Norman, who have earned more than $1 million on the tour this year, are favored. But Simpson said anyone in the field could win.

He recalled that Craig Stadler won the event in 1991 for his first tour victory in seven years.

Norman, who won the British Open last July and then lost to Azinger in a playoff for the PGA Championship in August, hasn’t played in the U.S. in the last six weeks while recovering from a shoulder injury he suffered doing stretching exercises.

He rested while fishing in the Bahamas with Price.

“I’ve never had any problems coming back from a long break,” Norman said.

After disappointing years in 1991 and 1992, Norman is back on his game.

“A lot of people had written me off,” he said. “I wanted to prove I could do it. I took a punch in the solar plexus. But I fought back.”

Even though the money title and PGA player-of-the-year honors are at stake for Norman, Price and Azinger, Norman is more concerned about not being able to win the Vardon Trophy for lowest stroke average.

He has a tour-leading average of 68.87 and he thought he needed 15 tournaments to be eligible to win.

Instead he needed 60 rounds and will have only 58 after the Tour Championship, the last sanctioned event of the year.

“The Vardon matters,” he said. “I would have done something else, changed my schedule if I knew.”

Norman has been a renowned player for years. Azinger, who has been on the tour for seven years and has earned nearly $7 million, hasn’t been a celebrity until this year.

His PGA victory over Norman and his participation on the winning U.S. Ryder Cup team has changed his image.

“Gosh, I can go into ratty gas stations and guys with tattoos recognize me,” Azinger said.

Golf Notes

Germany’s Bernhard Langer, the Masters winner, is 14th on the money list but he isn’t a member of the tour and didn’t qualify for the tournament. So Rick Fehr qualified in the No. 31 spot. . . . Corey Pavin, who won the World Match Play Championship on Sunday in Wentworth, England, by beating Nick Faldo, apparently didn’t suffer much jet lag despite his 11-hour flight to San Francisco. He had an early tee time Tuesday in the pro-am and still shot a 66, sharing the medal with Scott Simpson, Phil Mickelson and Nolan Henke.

Tom Kite, who won the Tour Championship in 1989 at Hilton Head, S.C., on the Olympic course: “It’s one of the toughest driving courses you’ll ever see and a lot of it has do with with the fact that some of the fairways tend to fall off on the side. You have a lot of dogleg holes and the dogleg may go to the right and the slope may go to the right. So you really have to drive the ball well.” . . .Kite, recently responding to a question as to whether Australian players should be involved in Ryder Cup competition: “We’d kick their butt, just like we did the Europeans.”