This Week September 2-8

PGA
Greater Milwaukee Open, Brown Deer Park Golf Course, Milwaukee
In the last three GMOs, Scott Hoch (below) has two wins, Loren Roberts a win and a second

LPGA
Safeway Championship, Columbia Edgewater Country Club, Portland
1997 U.S. Open champ Alison Nicholas has won two of her three LPGA titles in Portland

Senior
Emerald Coast Classic, The Moors Golf Club, Milton, Fla.
Nobody coasts at the Emerald—playoffs have determined the winners of all three Classics

Europe
Canon European Masters, Crans-sur-Sierre Golf Course, Crans-sur-Sierre, Switzerland Defending champion Costantino Rocca knows every cranny of the Crans

PGA Tour
Cheesy State Of the Game

Golf has gone Wisconcentric. Edgerton's Steve Stricker nearly won the PGA, while Milwaukee native Skip Kendall tied for 10th. Madison's Sherri Steinhauer took home the trophy at last month's Women's British Open and earned a spot on the U.S. Solheim Cup team. Now the state's fans have badgered two-time U.S. Open champ Andy North, also of Madison, into coming down from the Senior tour's TV booth to play in the Greater Milwaukee Open. Other favorite sons on hand will be Madison's Jerry Kelly—whose wife, Carol, gave birth to a son, Cooper Patrick, during the PGA—and Appleton's J.P. Hayes, who tied for third at Pebble Beach. Barry Cheesman? Sorry, he's from Illinois.
?ABC, SATURDAY, 1:30 PM; SUNDAY, 4 PM

LPGA
No Safe Way to Follow Up a Banner Year

Chris Johnson birdied the final two holes to win last year's Safeway Championship and its $82,500 first prize. That performance and her triumph at the '97 LPGA Championship helped push her earnings for the year to $722,330, more than three times what she had made in any of her other 18 seasons on tour. This year, however, Johnson has returned to earth. Though she made the Solheim Cup squad, she is winless and stands 20th on the money list. A successful defense at Columbia Edgewater might rejuvenate the 39-year-old Johnson's career, but to bag the Safeway she will have to contend with Se Ri Pak and Karrie Webb, whose combined age is 43.

Senior Tour
Here's Where Aoki Proved He's A-O.K.

Isao Aoki, runner-up to Jack Nicklaus at the 1980 U.S. Open, had finished second five times on the Senior tour in '97 when he arrived at the Emerald Coast Classic. A first-round 71 left him eight strokes off the lead, but he responded with a tour-record 60 the following day and closed with a 65 on Sunday. That was just enough to force a sudden-death playoff with Gil Morgan, which Aoki won with a par on the second extra hole. Watch Aoki, Morgan and red-hot Hale Irwin reel off more birds this weekend at the Moors, where par is fast becoming an endangered species. Last September the oldsters set a Senior tour scoring record there by averaging only 69.4 strokes per round.
?GOLF CHANNEL, SAT., 5:30 PM; SUN., 2:30 PM