Toshiba Senior Classic Golf: Senior Tour trying to become more

fan-friendly

Richard Dunn

NEWPORT BEACH - The Senior PGA Tour has introduced a series of new

initiatives this year, but perhaps the most compelling change will affect

the television viewing audience and not those in attendance at the golf

tournament.

Attaching microphones to players -- one of the more controversial

ideas the tour is trying -- appears to be somewhat of a success with most

of the season’s early tournaments going along with the program.

But some players, including two-time Senior Tour Player of the Year

and leading money winner Bruce Fleisher, wonder if miking players is

asking for trouble.

“You’ve got to look at that real hard. We’re still playing for big

dollars. We’re still competing,” said Fleisher, referring to the fact

that a player in contention heading to the 18th tee might not be

comfortable wearing a microphone, knowing his every utterance will be

heard in living rooms across America.

Of the tour’s new initiatives, dropping the ropes for the last group

so the gallery can follow will happen for the first time in the eighth

annual Toshiba Senior Classic at Newport Beach Country Club.

Tournament director Jeff Purser said the ropes will be dropped at 16

and fans can walk behind the leaders for the remaining three holes.

Purser added that they “will try to have some player interaction on

Friday (March 8), Saturday and Sunday outside of the clubhouse.” There

will not be a Q & A session between the player and fans, Purser said, but

some type of fan-friendly post-round discussion will probably take place.

“Tons of this depends on the player,” said Purser, who has implemented

his own promotion this year for the Toshiba Classic, a lottery to win a

nine-hole round with Fuzzy Zoeller in the Toshiba Monday Pro-Am (March

4).

Other proposed changes the tour is seeking for 2003 include an

increase in 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.

Other new initiatives include having players stop to answer questions

that fans submit during the round and asking players to conduct clinics.

The tour will also try to avoid taped broadcasts on CNBC, which took over

last year for ESPN after seven years of declining ratings.

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

ongoing struggle to keep individual tournament title sponsors, some

believe, is because of unknowns on the golf course.

Let’s face it. Who really cares if Fleisher is miked up coming down

the stretch? Now, if it’s Arnold Palmer or Lee Trevino wearing a

microphone, fewer television viewers are likely to flip the channel on

their remote.

Allen Doyle, who won the rain-shortened 2000 Toshiba Classic at

Newport Beach, 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 9/11, 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 Palmer and Jack Nicklaus don’t

play anymore? And, while a new crop of 50-year-olds show up each year, is

someone like Zoeller the type of player who fits the so-called

“nostalgia” label?

How the new Senior Tour initiatives affect Newport and the rest of its

stops remain to be seen.