To Bruce Fleisher, being on the PGA
Senior Tour is all its cracked up to be.

HARRY KIRSBAUM
Staff Writer

Bruce Fleisher at the start of
the TPC third round

hwack. Bruce Fleisher crushes his drive on
the practice tee on a perfect Wednesday
afternoon. He has just finished playing the
pro-am tournament with three Ford execu-
tives at the TPC of Michigan in Dearborn, and now
it's time for some fine-tuning.
The leading money winner on the senior tour,
Fleisher was preparing for last weekend's Ford Motor
Company Senior Players Championship.
"Fire away, babe," he says, his swing so engrained he
can take questions while in the middle of it.
The ball explodes off the tee, arching straight and
far. And, oh yeah, he's wearing Italian dress shoes, not
golf spikes.

Between swin,
crs other players and caddies drop by to
chat, joke and offer congratulations to the alma
' Ede
Fleisher, who won the U. S. Senior Open two weeks
before.
"This guy speaks more Hebrew than I do," he says of a
South African player who shouts "Shalom, Bruce."
Fleisher, at 52, is enjoying life on the senior tour, and
although he plays among better known players like Jack •
Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson, he
has led the tour in earnings since he joined in 1999.
Fleisher has joined legends Jack Nicklaus and Arnold
Palmer as the only men to win the U.S. Amateur and the
Senior Open.
"There's less tension [on the senior touri than on the
PGA tour, but the competition is still there," says
Fleisher, of Ballen Isles, Fla. "I don't need to be buddy-
buddy with everybody."

7/20

2001

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