Golf is the ultimate merit sport. If you perform well, you will make lots of money, take home trophies galore, and receive tons of accolades. If your game goes south, you miss the cut, still have to pay all your expenses for the week, and your overall bank account dwindles. It is so very far removed from being a New York Yankeee third baseman who still pockets his $30 million annual salary whether he starts on the field or sits on the bench.
The Champions Tour, formerly known as the Senior PGA Tour, is golf”s ultimate mulligan. Regular PGA Tour pros normally start out in their 20s, often hit their prime in their 30s, and finally hit some sort of invisible wall once they reach their 40s. If we were to look at today”s PGA Tour, we”ve seen the slow demise in the golf games of 40-somethings Vijay Singh, Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk ever since they crossed that magic line from 39 to 40 years of age.
When you get into your 40s as a professional golfer, all those 20-somethings such as Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson seem to hit it just a little bit farther, seem to hit it just a little bit closer, and seem to make a few more downhill 5-foot par putts, especially down the stretch. However, once you get to your 50th birthday, you”re eligible to play on the Champions Tour. Suddenly, you”re one of the young guys and everyone else around you is older. Merely follow the recent Senior Tour careers of Freddie Couples, Bernhard Langer and Tom Lehman and you”ll fully comprehend my point.
There”s also room on the Champions Tour for that second-tiered professional from the past, one with a recognizable name. I”m talking about John Cook, Russ Cochran and Jeff Sluman among a whole lot of others on the senior circuit. They won a handful of times on the regular tour during their prime, made a very nice living, and now they find themselves among the top 10 money winners on the Senior Tour. Golfing life has gotten better and also financially healthier for them since they joined the over-50 golfing set.
There are also a handful of “who”s he?” professionals on the Champions Tour. They were never, ever marquee names on the PGA Tour nor were they even journeymen or bubble boys. Among the top-30 money winners from last season”s Senior Tour were names such as Rod Spittle and Chien Soon Lu. They made a bundle of money last year, are fully exempt on the Champions Tour this year because of their top-30 finish, and are full-fledged members of the Walt Zembriski rank and file who are truly benefiting from the merits of playing great golf once you reach the age of 50. After all, the golf ball has no idea whether you are Tom Lehman or Mike Goodes.
Golfers such as Spittle, Lu and Goodes have found their place on the Champions tour through the qualifying process. The senior set has a three-tiered Q School process similar to what currently goes on with the regular PGA Tour. At this moment, we are in the midst of stage two with qualifiers being held in Florida, Texas and at California”s Bear Creek Golf Club in Murrieta. Getting through stage two qualifying gets you to stage three. The top eight at Senior Q School receive exempt status onto the Champions Tour for 2013.
Making a lot of noise at the Murrieta qualifier is Northern Californian Jeff Brehaut. Brehaut has been around professional golf for the past 30 years, seemingly always on the bubble on the regular tour and often finding himself relegated to minor league status on the Buy.com Tour. The main thing Brehaut did to put himself in this position was to stay competitively tough, teeing it up wherever he could to keep his game honed from the moment he turned 50 years of age.
Of course, Brehaut, the three-decade PGA Tour journeyman, is surrounded by a slew of golfers who have a similar, if not superior, record over the past 30 years. Ernie Gonzalez is currently going through stage two qualifying. He won the 1986 Pensacola Open on tour. Fred Wadsworth is another hopeful who had his lone victory in 1986 at the Southern Open. Wadsworth is one of those trivia answers as he is but one of a handful who Monday qualified to get into the Southern Open and then prevailed to win the whole thing later that week. Speaking of that mid-1980s era, T.C. Chen of Taiwan is also trying to get through stage two qualifying this week. It was in 1985 that Chen lost his four-stroke lead during the final round of the United States Open. As you may recall, Chen made a quadruple-bogey on the sixth hole when he double-hit a chip. He ultimately lost the Open to Andy North by one stroke. Chen did go on to win the Los Angeles Open, but he will forever be remembered for his U.S. Open meltdown. A successful Senior Tour career might help to ease those past National Open pains for Chen.
Another local who is at Murrieta is Don Levin of Sacramento. Levin played on the tour in the 1980s, made some good money for a handful of winters while competing in the South African Tour, and is better known as the father of PGA Tour pro Spencer Levin.
We know it”s a big jump from celebrity golf status to the Senior Tour, yet former Washington Redskins Super Bowl quarterback Mark Rypien is also attempting to join the play-for-pay ranks. Long a dominant player at places such as Edgewood Tahoe, Rypien is trying to match skills with two-time tour winner Joe Inman and former B.C. Open champion Chris Perry in his quest to play with the senior set. Rypien is more obvious to the fact that the Champions Tour is a big jump as evidenced by his opening-hole double-bogey and opening-round 81 on Tuesday at Murietta. There is no Senior Tour future for Rypien in 2013.
Finally, I”m intrigued by seeing how my childhood golfing buddy, Lance Ten Broeck, does this week in the Florida qualifier. A longtime journeyman professional who won the 1984 Magnolia Golf Classic, Ten Broeck has caddied for the past 15 years for Jasper Parnevik, Robert Allenby and now Tim Herron, but he also showed his ability level when he led the U.S. Senior Open this past summer after 36 holes and finished in a tie for ninth when all was said and done.
After all, anything is possible in golf, and the ultimate mulligan that is the Champions Tour makes the big names and the no names want a piece of tour millions. You”ve just got to qualify.
