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Champions Feature
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 (photo: Mark Susson) It took a domino combination of events for the senior golf tour, known officially since the end of 2002 as the Champions Tour, to take root. Arnold Palmer and others say the catalyst was the 1978 Legends of Golf. Roberto De Vicenzo, the Argentine legend, 56, birdied seven of the final eight holes to win for him and partner Julius Boros, persuading other seniors watching on TV that they could still excite the golfing public. Then came that cavalcade of household names of golf - the “gladiators of old,” author Mark Shaw called them - who agreed to commit to a new tour: names such as Sam Snead, Gardner Dickinson, Don January, Tommy Bolt and Miller Barber. But no one doubts that the key stamp of validity came when the king of golf - Palmer himself - won the PGA Seniors that first year, and the U.S. Seniors Open the next. What tour could go wrong with Palmer aboard? Longtime golf pro Frank Beard captured those early years, in “Making the Turn” (1992), his book on the senior tour: “Our tour is built on nostalgia. The public wants a second chance to see Sam Snead and Billy Casper. The fact that they can still play is just icing on the cake.” The formula has worked. That 1980 total purse for a handful of events, of $475,000 grew to $16.1 million in five years and to $18.3 million by its 10th anniversary. In the early 1990s, it exploded to more than $40 million a year. Today, hits to the national economy have cost the Champions Tour numerous sponsors - it’s down from more than 40 tournaments and nearly $60 million to 23 and just over $46 million, the lowest since 1998. But the pros see a strong future, and the money is still attractive. Last year’s leading money winner, Tom Lehman, picked up $2,081,526. More than a dozen senior golfers won more than $1 million in prize money in 2011. Perhaps one big difference in the Champions Tour from its early years: No single player dominates anymore. The senior tour went through the Gary Player era, the Lee Trevino era, then the dominance years of Jim Colbert, then Gil Morgan, then Hale Irwin. In 1996, for example, Colbert won five times. The next year, Irwin won nine times. Then in 1998, Irwin and Morgan dominated with seven and six wins respectively. But last year, the Champions Tour produced just four multiple winners, and only Lehman and John Cook won three tournaments. One thing hasn’t changed: The Champions Tour is aptly named. The top is loaded with household names. Champions Tour communications director Mark Williams says the tournament format fits nicely with the schedules of the top pros. “They have so many other opportunities available to them, they aren’t going to play more tournaments than this anyway,” Williams said. “The nice thing is, when we do have a tournament, almost all the top names show up.” The change in money may be the big difference in scheduling from the earlier days. “Those pioneer seniors played because the tour gave them second wind to make good money,” said Van Costa, a manager for several of the older pros and tour caddy for senior pioneer Al Geiberger. “Today’s top pros don’t always need to rely on the Champions Tour for a living.” Geiberger, Costa points out, won considerably less in his long career on the regular tour than he did on the seniors tour. Irwin made under $6 million after more than 30 years on the regular tour, but is the all-time leading money winner at more than $26 million after 17 years on the Champions Tour. That doesn’t mean today’s stars don’t like the money. John Cook, who finished second to Tom Lehman on the money list for 2011 on the Champions Tour, at $1,747,075, never reached closed to that much for a single year when he played the regular tour. Ditto for Lehman, whose $2 million-plus beat any year he had on the regular tour. “Our prize pool is certainly a major attraction,” said Williams, the Champions Tour spokesman. “We’ve been steady at about $46 million despite the economy, and we think that’s only going to improve.” Certainly one difference from the older tour is today’s Champions Tour may be more business-like. Doug Sanders, now 78 and living in Houston, Texas, a flamboyant star of both tours in his day, says the seniors who started the tour in the 1980s were much closer as a group. “We were about family, not who has the biggest airplane,” Sanders said. “We traveled together, ate together, and told stories together.” Sanders enjoys following today’s Champions Tour. He said he hopes today’s players appreciate the efforts of the early players to pave the way. Costa, who has remained friends with many of those players, points out that nobody came to the seniors and asked them to join a tour. The seniors, “started this thing themselves,” Costa said. “That’s just amazing, when you see what it has become. Truly one of the great success stories of sports.” The only tournament available for seniors in 1979 was the annual Legends of Golf at the Onion Creek Golf Club in Austin, Texas. Di Vicenzo’s birdie binge that year captivated the public. Arnold Palmer wrote in his book, “A Golfer’s Life”: “There was a men’s closing day dinner that night at the Latrobe Country Club [which Palmer owns], and nobody in the men’s grill would go upstairs to the dinner until the action was over!” A few months later, a group of top seniors met to see if a tour was feasible. Gardner Dickinson, a former touring pro who was among those at that first meeting, wrote in his autobiography, “Let ‘er Rip,” that Leo Fraser, former president of the PGA of America, offered to sponsor the first tournament at the Atlantic City Country Club. That was the boost needed. But there was one asterisk that the pros felt was necessary, according to Dickinson: “The most important single factor was that Sam Snead agreed to play all the events we could schedule.” Snead lived up to that promise too. That led to a meeting with then-PGA Tour director Deane Beman, to persuade him to incorporate the seniors tour as part of its organization. Williams, tour spokesman today, believes Beman deserves much of the credit for the growth of that tour. The next step, after Beman, was to secure television exposure. The pros flew to New York City and came back with an agreement from Don Ohlmeyer Productions to televise many of its stops. Word quickly spread among golfers in their late 40s who had left the regular tour. They had found it too hard to compete against the “flat bellies,” as Lee Trevino called the young players. Jimmy Powell, 77, vividly recalls when he first got the news. “I was teaching at La Quinta Country Club when Ernie Vossler [longtime golfing entrepreneur], came up to me and said, ‘Jimmy, you’d better be getting your game in shape. This senior tour is going to happen.’ I wasn’t eligible for the senior tour until 1985, but I went back to qualifying school to get myself back on the regular tour for 1980 and 1981. I knew I wasn’t going to make much money at my age, but I did it to get my game ready for the senior tour.” Powell, now living in Palm Desert, won four times on the senior tour and 21 times on what was called the “super seniors” events within a tournament for those 60 and older. (No longer included). The first year, 1980, saw just four tournaments - Don January won that first event at the Atlantic City County Club. However, there were seven the next year. And when Powell joined the fifth year, there were 24 tournaments. Powell agrees with Doug Sanders that the real selling point of the early days was Palmer. “Any time Arnie was in a tournament, the public was excited, and that guaranteed success.” The group had approached Palmer and asked him to lend his name to the tour, even though he was still playing the regular tour. Palmer wrote in his autobiography that the senior tour came along at a perfect time for him: “I needed a new challenge and something big to play for.” Palmer also worked behind the scenes to help bring on sponsors for the new tour. Winning the Seniors PGA the first year helped cinch it. Palmer wrote: “The excitement and sudden interest in the new tour that win created across the business world, I suppose, proved incalculable.” But nobody could have predicted how quickly the senior tour would mushroom. Those 24 tournaments in 1985 grew in future years to 28, 32, 34, 35, 38, then into the 40s. “We were just amazed,” Powell said. “Who could have dreamed that?It was a life-saver for many of us.” Part of the success of today’s Champions Tour, suggests spokesman Williams, is that many of the new players coming in at age 50 are already known to the golfing public. Last year a top money winner on the regular tour, Kenny Perry (who came within a stroke of winning the Masters), turned 50 and played both tours. This year, Duffy Waldorf, Andrew McGee, and Kirk Triplett turn 50 and will join the Champions Tour. “I talked to Kirk Triplett the other day and told him how delighted we were that he would be on our tour,” said Williams. “His response was, you have no idea how delighted I am to be here.” One fear was that, because top names on the regular tour have become so wealthy through outside opportunities, that the senior tour wouldn’t hold that much interest for them. But, said Williams, all the top names who turn 50, like Fred Couples and Mark O’Meara and Cook in recent years, wanted to be a part of the Champions Tour. Jimmy Powell says it surprises him too: “I see a guy like Freddie Couples playing the senior tour. Why does he need it? I guess it’s just in your blood. It’s like a thoroughbred race horse; competing is just something you have to do.” The big closer each year for the Champions Tour is the Charles Schwab Cup. This year, Nov. 1-4, it moves back to a longtime seniors venue, the Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Arizona. Williams is convinced that tournament simply jump-starts interest in the senior tour for the next year. Will that hold for the future? How long will interest continue in a seniors-level tour among the public? Well, Phil Mickelson turns 50 in 2020 and Tiger Woods in 2025. Rory McIlroy eclipses 50 in 2039. One could guess the Champions Tour will be in good shape through at least the first half of the century. |
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