Golf: Looking for more nostalgia

Richard Dunn

The Senior PGA Tour will be trying to beef up its tournaments with

more familiar names in 2002, but the tour might also alienate the fringe

50-and-over players again.

Of the several proposed changes the tour is seeking, one is suggested

to increase each tournament’s playing field from 78 players to 84 through

two new categories:

Four of the spots will be available for players with at least two PGA

Tour victories or one major championship; the other two spots will be

sponsor’s exemptions for players who meet the same criteria. There will

still be only four open qualifying spots each week.

Part of the reason for the tour’s decline in television ratings and

ongoing struggle to keep individual tournament title sponsors is because

of unknowns on the golf course.

The Senior Tour, operated at each stop by a charity at each stop,

needs players like Lee Trevino to sell a few tickets. And while Allen

Doyle might have enjoyed another tremendous year on the tour, it is

unlikely he would get stopped at a mall.

The tour, which has experienced incredible success in Newport Beach

with the Toshiba Senior Classic (managed by Hoag Hospital), has been

accused in the past of operating under the good-ol’ boy network. Some

players have filed lawsuits against the tour, claiming the path to get

into a tournament is too difficult and unfair.

The tour is designed so that stars from the PGA Tour have the easiest

path. Most of the players come from the previous year’s official money

list and the all-time money list. Only eight spots are open to nonexempt

players, four of which are sponsor’s exemptions.

Jimmy Adams, a part-time Lido Isle resident and a regular on the

Monday qualifying circuit, understands that fans pay to watch the marquee

players, but believes that they also want to see the unknown player make

it big.

Doyle, who won the 2000 Toshiba Classic at Newport Beach Country Club,

said the tour is a combination of competition and nostalgia, but added

that “if the (television) ratings are down, whatever is driving us isn’t

doing a very good job.”

Even before the tumbling economy in the aftermath of Sept. 11, as many

as seven events on the Senior Tour were reportedly threatening to go by

the wayside in 2002.

How long can nostalgia hold up when Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus

are virtually out of the picture? And, while a new crop of 50-year-olds

show up each year, is someone like Fuzzy Zoeller, who turned 50 this

month, the type of player who fits the so-called “nostalgia” label?

Outside of Newport and a few other stops, the Senior Tour is in need

of a make-over.

Among the proposed changes Wednesday include putting microphones on

players, having them stop to answer questions that fans submit during the

round, allowing the gallery to walk down the fairway over the final four

holes and asking players to conduct clinics. The tour will also try to

avoid taped broadcasts on CNBC, which took over this year for ESPN after

seven years of declining ratings.

Increasing the field by six players, however, caught my attention

because of players like Adams and Harry Toscano, who filed a $9-million

antitrust suit against the PGA Tour and some of its sponsors, alleging a

conspiracy that limits the field to certain players.

The increased field will not help players like Toscano, but will

benefit veterans like Tommy Aaron, Walt Zembriski and Orville Moody.

Golf course architect Tom Fazio was on hand Thursday night at the 10th

anniversary celebration of Pelican Hill Golf Club, which he designed.

Pelican Hill’s 10th anniversary golf tournament is today at 10 a.m. on

the Ocean South course -- the first of two 18-hole courses built.

Richard Dunn’s golf column appears every Thursday.