Shaping the Seniors
When Arnold Palmer won the PGA Seniors Championship 40 years ago, he lit the wick on a figurative firecracker that exploded into what quickly became one of the best new ventures in all of sports—its first senior golf tour. Just five years later, what was then known as the Senior PGA Tour was sporting a year-long, 28-tournament schedule and showcasing the aging star players of that era in many destinations never visited in their years on the regular PGA Tour. Before long, similar tours sprang up in Europe, Japan and Australia, solidifying senior golf throughout the world.
The prequel to the Senior PGA Tour and Palmer’s victory as a 51-year-old was an astonishing playoff the previous year in a made-for-television team event created by Fred Raphael and appropriately called The Legends of Golf. After 56-year-old Roberto De Vicenzo birdied the 17th hole and his 59-year-old partner Julius Boros the 18th, to forge a final-round tie with 55-year-old Art Wall and 61-year-old Tommy Bolt, those four seniors set out on a playoff that dazzled all who watched it, live and on TV. A barrage of 11 birdies with nary a tap-in followed before De Vicenzo holed his fifth in a row on the sixth extra hole to end the extravaganza.
“America has discovered the senior golfers,” crowed the announcer.
Until then, the competitive life of tournament golfers usually ended, akin to most other professional sports, when they were passing through their 40s. Few had realized that the talents of top golfers barely erode when they reach middle age. Those pros knew it though and prompted by the popularity of The Legends, a group of them—Sam Snead, Julius Boros, Bob Goalby, Don January, Gardner Dickinson and Dan Sikes, all prominent players—huddled with Tour Commissioner Deane Beman in early 1980, settled a few differences and created a Senior Tour that launched a brief season with a June tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
At that point, Palmer was sitting on the periphery, busy with his business life and still playing a fairly-full schedule on the regular tour. “I felt I still had some unfinished business left (there), mainly the PGA Championship [his missing link to a majors Grand Slam],” he explained in his autobiography, A Golfer’s Life.
“(But) it was generally agreed that the fledgling tour needed another marquee name or two to help sell the idea of an over-50 tournament circuit to the public and, most critical, to attract potential sponsors. Since my friends organizing the new tour asked me to lend the clout of my name and presence, and considering all the things the PGA and PGA Tour had done for me over the years, I felt morally obliged to help out.”
He did so in more ways than one. Firstly Palmer and management company IMG—to whom Palmer was a client created the World Seniors Invitational in that founding year. The idea received backing from friends and golf-minded leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina, who were anxious to replace the Kemper Open on the main tour, which Beman had moved away from Charlotte to Washington D.C. in 1979 (for a few years The World Seniors operated independently, with its own qualification format, before becoming an official Senior Tour event in 1984).
Then that December came Palmer’s victory at Turnberry Isle Resort in the PGA Senior Championship, an event that had been given little recognition during its many previous years of existence. “The excitement and sudden interest in the new tour that win created across the business world, I suppose, proved incalculable,” Palmer reflected in his book.
“Considering the things the PGA & PGA Tour had done for me I felt obliged to
help out”
Arnold gave senior golf another big boost the following season. Back in 1980 the United States Golf Association boarded the bandwagon with the establishment of a U.S. Senior Open Championship and booked it at the renowned Winged Foot Club in metropolitan New York. However, following its guideline for its Senior Amateur, the USGA set the eligibility age at 55. That ruled out the likes of Palmer, Billy Casper, Gene Littler, January and a host of other top tour players in their early 50s. The event, won by De Vicenzo, was not much of a draw and the USGA quickly and wisely changed the age minimum to 50 for the 1981 championship at Detroit’s famed Oakland Hills. The result was immediately rewarding: A thrilling tournament that Palmer won in his frequent come-from-behind style in an 18-hole playoff against Casper and little-known Bob Stone. From there the Senior Open became established as the cornerstone of the Senior Tour.
Over the tour’s first 40 years, the game’s best players, with few exceptions, have extended their careers into their sixties. Many enjoyed greater success in senior golf that they had in their earlier careers. The roster of winners is topped by Hall-of-Famers, starting with Hale Irwin with 45, Bernhard Langer with 40 and Lee Trevino with 29, but on the other side of the coin are three men who never won on the regular tour—Jim Dent with 12 senior wins and Allan Doyle and Dana Quigley with 11. Bruce Fleisher and Orville Moody, who each won just once in their earlier careers, rang up 18 and 11 victories apiece in over-fifties golf.
The tour’s star power has waxed and waned over time, but the immediate prospects shine brightly.
“It’s amazing to think of 2020 as the 40th year of PGA Tour Champions as we continue expanding globally with annual tournaments in Morocco, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada,” observed its president, Miller Brady. “I am confident our tour is poised to continue its success for years to come. 2020 will be an exciting season on the (rookie) front with names like Ernie Els, Jim Furyk and Mike Weir joining our tour.”
The season’s first tournament—the Mitsubishi Electric Championship—seemingly verified Brady’s prediction. Eleven Hall-of-Famers teed it up in Hawaii and at one point coming down the stretch in the final round four of them— Langer, Fred Couples, Retief Goosen and Els—were tied for the lead before entertaining Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez outlasted them all to win in a two-hole playoff.
The excitement will be elevated even more if Phil Mickelson, as of the start of the season non-committal, decides to throw his lot in with the circuit after he turns 50 in mid-June. Don’t overlook several other Hall-of-Famers either. Vijay Singh, whose career earnings of more than $88-million is exceeded only by Tiger Woods, Mickelson and Els, already had four Champions Tour wins though only playing sporadically in 2017-18. Davis Love III, the two-time Ryder Cup captain, PGA champion and 21-times winner on the regular tour, has been dipping his toe in senior golf and Colin Montgomerie already numbers three senior majors and 10 other tournaments among his 54 world-wide wins while playing regularly on the Champions and Europe’s senior Staysure Tour.
Clearly, with its 20-year financial support of the Charles Schwab organization extending to 2035 and a strong cast of name players in or coming into the fields, the PGA Tour Champions is in fine shape for its next 40 years.