Stewart Cink is back in The Woodlands this week with a trophy already in hand and the weight of a title defense waiting at the Insperity Invitational near Houston. He arrives as the defending champion after beating Retief Goosen in a playoff last year, and he comes in after winning the Regions Tradition.
Cink has won four times in eight Champions Tour events this season and enters the week atop the Charles Schwab Cup standings, a run that makes him the player to beat in a 78-player field. The Insperity Invitational begins at The Woodlands Country Club, a par-72 layout stretching 7,002 yards, where one extra hole decided last year’s finish after Cink and Goosen were tied through 54 holes.
The field is crowded with familiar names, including Bernhard Langer, Padraig Harrington, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Colin Montgomerie and Goosen. Langer has won the tournament four times and still owns the event scoring records, including a 191 total during his dominant 2007 victory.
Montgomerie arrives fresh off a third-place finish at the Regions Tradition, adding another layer to a week that already carries the feel of a major gathering on the senior circuit. But the story still centers on Cink, who has turned a strong stretch into the season’s defining pace and now must prove he can do it again on a course where one slip can send the title into overtime.
The question now is whether anyone in this field can slow him before the tournament reaches its final round, because Cink has already shown he can win when the pressure tightens and the playoff starts to look inevitable.
