In its infancy, the Senior PGA Tour provided a stage on which Arnold Palmer could still play the role of “The King.” Other past golfing heroes were his court, providing their own fans with a few more lasting memories. By the time it reached adulthood–marking its 21st birthday last year–the tour was in trouble.
With the exception of the four major championships and a few other events, attendance was dropping. Corporate interest was waning too.
The competition, though often top-notch, wasn’t compelling. Watching a bunch of sometimes grumpy old men beat each other down for exorbitant purses was not as exciting as, say, watching Tiger Woods do that to the rest of the PGA Tour.
“It became more like the regular tour; it became too serious,” Tom Kite said recently. “If we try to compete with the regular tour, we’re going to come up short. We can’t go head-to-head and do the same things they do. We’ve got to do different things.”
At next weekend’s U.S. Senior Open in Owings Mills, Md., the senior tour will put on a happier face than the one it has worn in recent years.
Changing galleries
Unlike its early years, the senior tour’s audience includes a far wider demographic range. The galleries are much younger, encompassing everyone from grade school kids to grandparents, with most of the fans now being baby boomers who know a 7-wood from a 7-iron.
For those fresh off the regular PGA Tour, it can be a difficult adjustment.
“It is a serious competition, but it’s a different kind of competition, and it’s important for the guys to understand that,” said Andy North, a two-time U.S. Open champion who splits his duties between playing the senior tour and analyzing play on the regular tour for ESPN.
It was obvious the past couple of years to tour officials that changes needed to be made.
Senior tour officials hoped that breaking down whatever barriers still existed between players and fans would bring a new audience. It has resulted in on-course interviews, additional pro-ams before events and other forums to raise interest.
“What we have to do is make sure that we’re putting the players in situations where they can utilize their personality traits,” said Jeff Monday, the senior tour’s chief of operations.
The telecasts, a huge part of the senior tour’s past success and future survival, now include veteran teaching pro Jim McLean re-creating shots–both good and bad–so viewers can pick up tips. Also fans e-mail questions to be answered on air.
“We want to make this an interactive medium,” Monday said.
But there is no denying that the senior tour, though not in the trouble it was in a year ago, is still clearly in transition.
Old legends such as Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, as well as superstar personalities Lee Trevino and Chi Chi Rodriguez, are winding down their storied careers while former PGA Tour fan favorites Ben Crenshaw and Fuzzy Zoeller are adjusting to their new lives.
Zoeller brought the senior tour a much-needed boost of publicity by winning the Senior PGA Championship this month at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio.
Other players on the tour have impressive resumes but less visibility. The golf played by Dave Stockton, Ray Floyd, Hale Irwin and Larry Nelson, and later by Bruce Fleisher and Allen Doyle–has been high level. Yet hardly anyone noticed.
“The senior tour can’t make superstars,” Fleisher said. “The only superstars we have are players who were superstars on the regular tour.”
Breaking away
Irwin said he thinks it’s time for the senior tour to run its own show, perhaps with its own commissioner. According to a report in Sports Illustrated last month, there was a heated meeting between some players and PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem regarding several issues May 7 in Kansas City, Mo.
“I think we should go out and be soliciting our own business deals, our own marketing agenda and not be hogtied to what the tour is doing,” Irwin said.
Doyle, who made the PGA Tour at 47 after a distinguished amateur career, blames tour officials for the troubles that have afflicted the senior tour.
“Where the tour has failed is they have guys like Bruce, guys like myself–and you can come up with a handful of names–where if they started 3 1/2 years ago marketing us properly, we would have been viewed as more of a star than we are,” Doyle said.
The tour took a hit last year when it saw its already-minuscule ratings numbers nose-dive with the move from ESPN to CNBC. If leaving ESPN for the hard-to-find business-oriented network proved a puzzling decision, it was compounded by the fact that CNBC’s telecasts were mostly on tape delay.
“We’ve got to do a better job with our TV,” Stockton said last month. “On the local level, everything is fine. But you also want it to be watched by millions of people.”
This year, 23 of CNBC’s 29 telecasts (the most of any tour) will be shown live, usually in the same time slot. Through last month’s TD Waterhouse Classic, the ratings had increased on the average of 6 percent a telecast from last year, with 211,000 households and 256,000 fans 18 and older estimated to be tuned in.
Trying to find the perfect balance between competition and entertainment is another tricky equation. If the players are constantly yukking it up, then why should the public take them seriously? But if players remain the steely-eyed automatons they were on the regular tour, will fans stay interested?
It will also be vital for the senior tour that popular players such as Crenshaw and Zoeller regain their competitive edge, and that those personalities at the end of their regular tour careers–such as Craig Stadler, Peter Jacobsen and Greg Norman–look to recapture some of their lost magic among the 50-and-over set.
“I think a key factor for the future of the senior tour is to make sure we differentiate ourselves from other professional golf,” Monday said.
“The senior tour is unique. We have unique players and we have unique opportunities that we can do on-site and in telecasts that might not fit within other professional golf,” he said. “If we can provide a new experience for the fan, then it’s going to be all that much better for the senior tour.”
