East Meadow, N.Y. ? It’s easy to handicap this week’s Champions Tour event: Jim Thorpe wins in a playoff.

The Commerce Bank Championship changed venues two years ago and Thorpe has won both events at the Red Course at Eisenhower Park with six rounds in the 60s, including a 60 in the second round in 2003.

A playoff?

The last four Champions Tour events and five of the last six have gone to sudden death, making the term 54-hole tournament kind of iffy.

“The competition out here is incredible and it gets tougher every week,” Thorpe said as he prepared for his second defense of the Commerce Bank Classic which gets under way Friday. “But this week is more exciting for me than any other this year, knowing I have won two in a row and I play well here.”

It’s not as if Thorpe struggles around the other courses on the circuit. He has two wins this year – the FedEx Kinkos Classic and Blue Angels Classic in consecutive weeks in May. He is seventh on the money list with almost $800,000 and he leads the tour with 170 birdies.

But he feels comfortable on this 6,989-yard county public course that has been stretched this year to a par 71 rather than the par-70 layout Thorpe has owned the last two years.

“I like tough venues where the greens are firm and the fairways are firm. It separates the men from the boys,” he said. “It’s the same for everybody so let’s go play.”

But it’s different this week for the 56-year-old Thorpe.

He’s trying to become the second player to win this event three straight years.