[PHOTO: Stan Badz]
The Charles Schwab Cup Championship, the PGA Tour Champions’ season-ending climax, will be decided today and I will be watching, ready to be inspired.
I realise that such exuberance sounds as misplaced as the character of Navin Johnson in “The Jerk” running around crying out, “The new phone books are here!” although citing a comedy from 1979 probably only reinforces the suspicion that this senior golf fan is probably an out-of-touch old man.
I’ll contend that label is only half right, but I get it. In a moment when professional golf is obsessed with “improving the product”, you don’t hear a lot of praise for the round-belly tour, with its carts, sparse crowds, too many Joe Secondchances and not enough big names. Sure, it was a great idea in 1980, but it peaked with those Trevino-Nicklaus showdowns in the early ’90s.
So let me be clear about my anticipated source of inspiration.
Well before I was a senior, I was captured early on by the senior tour for its cavalcade of living golf history and for the artful swings and the shots. That affinity has grown deeper with the years. At least for me, the more you start thinking about stuff that matters, the more the PGA Tour Champions offers some answers.
It doesn’t matter to me who wins the Schwab Cup, and not because the bonus of $US2 million is a mere pittance in today’s pro golf dollars. It’s that I know that no matter who wins, it will provide meaning to that player, and to me, in a way unique to professional senior golf.
There is fulfillment in continuing to do the thing you love and are good at for as long as you can stay good enough. So that whatever successes occur towards the end will endure as some of the most satisfying memories.
“Oh yeah, winning again, or just playing well, it absolutely means more the older you get,” says Rocco Mediate, who last month won the Furyk and Friends at the age of 61, giving him a tour-sanctioned victory in the span of five decades. “In the wider world of golf, our tour might be overlooked, but in our world, we consider ourselves very relevant. Because we are fighting against time in this crazy hard game, but it’s such a good fight to be in, and you just appreciate that you still can.”
That’s true even for the tour’s bigger stars. At 53, Padraig Harrington, who with senior golf as a platform has become one of the game’s leading live wires on the internet and in his interviews, should continue to win for several more years by virtue of his zeal for the game and emphasis on increasing his swing speed. His joyful approach is contained within the favourite words of his late instructor, Bob Torrance, who would say on his way to the practice range, “Remember, these are the happiest days of your life.”
“There’s a beautiful ‘hope’ value in golf,” Harrington told Brian Keogh of the Irish Independent in June on the eve of his induction to the World Golf Hall of Fame. “The minute I start hitting shots, no matter how bad yesterday went, if I lost the tournament or whatever, the minute I start hitting shots, I find myself in this beautiful place of opportunity and hope that I’m just looking forward, and I love it.
“I love that end of things. I know at my age, I can’t do it, but I still go out to try and find the secret every day. And, you know, I sometimes say. ‘What else would I do?’ But in actual fact, it’s exactly what I want to do.”
Bernhard Langer, as succinct as Harrington is voluble, has become the model for the senior journey. If there is any justice, his record of 46 career PGA Tour Champions victories – at the moment the most underrated milestone in golf – should age even better than he has at 67. Asked thousands of times to explain how he’s done it, his best answer is a serious, “I guess I love golf.”
It’s the same reason many of his peers believe Tiger Woods, if he is at all physically capable, will play senior golf after he turns 50 at the end of next year. None other than Jack Nicklaus opined that if Woods decides to play, “He’ll absolutely kill everybody.” Woods’ main goal would be to win the US Senior Open and break his tie – at nine – with Bobby Jones for the most USGA titles. In 2023, Woods suggested he’d use a cart on the PGA Tour Champions, saying, I’ve got three more years [before] I get the little buggy and be out there with Fred [Couples].” If Woods does get out there, it will instantly disabuse any potential doubters among private-equity investors at PGA Tour Enterprises about the viability of the 50-and-over tour.
Woods’ affinity for old-school shot-making would also shine reflected glory on what the tour’s grizzled warriors do best.
“Our tour is obnoxiously talented,” Mediate says. “You see it with Padraig and Ernie [Els], but also the older guys who don’t hit it far, but have a lot of tricks. We improvise and invent shots – curve it, bounce it, change speeds – to get it around and make a score. You actually have to play more golf in your round than regular tour players. You look at Bernhard, he only swings 100mph and he won the US Senior Open, the hardest tournament we play, last year to break that record. He’s a genius player, and so are a lot of guys out here.”
So join this old man in following senior golf. You can learn a lot about golf, a little about life, and there’s a good chance you’ll be inspired.
