New Champions Tour Lacks Seniority

What do you call a golf tour featuring such tournament winners as Doug Tewell, Sammy Rachels, Stewart Ginn, Bob Gilder and Don Pooley? Maybe the Who Tour, but you’d probably expect to see Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey firing at the pins, then trashing their golf clubs.

There has been a lot going wrong with the Senior Tour, but its name didn’t seem to be one of them, at least until recently when it was reborn as the Champions Tour. Apparently, a golf tour occupied by and associated with seniors no longer cuts it, even though it has been called the Senior PGA Tour since it began 22 years ago.

On the other hand, at least something’s happening with this tour, whatever you want to call it, because for the longest time the only issue that generated any kind of controversy was carts. A lot of players rode in them, possibly because they knew in the back of their minds that they were playing on the Senior Tour and they had places reserved for them to sit, like they do on buses.

But now, to coincide with the launch of the Champions Tour, the cart-riding rules have been cleaned up a bit.

Players can still ride carts if they want, but Rule 1 of the “2003 Champions Tour Golf Cart Rules and Guidelines” states that they are encouraged to walk. Then there is Rule 5, which is new and certain to cause a problem or two. Caddies are banned from the carts, and so are bags. They’re just going to have to hoof it, haul the bags around by themselves and obey Rule 5, no matter how much their dogs are barking.

After all, this is the Champions Tour we’re talking about. There can be no doubt of that, not after reading more about the Golf Cart Regulations, which establish “a consistent no-cart provision in Champions Tour Major Championships and the Champions Tour Championship.”

Presumably, the no-cart provision also would be consistent in the Major Tour Championship Championships, if there ever were one.

One thing is coming through loud and clear. Tim Finchem, who runs the Champions Tour, has gone a little nutty with this branding thing.

Besides its name, there’s a lot of tinkering going on with the tour, which clearly wants to look not only younger, but also relevant, which has been an ongoing battle. Who won and what did he shoot? Who cares? Where’s Arnie and Jack?

To begin, the schedule has been trimmed from 37 tournaments to 31. The biggest reason for that is the economy was as sour as Hubert Green in a pro-am. But there is also a huge upside to fewer tournaments. The big-time players are likely to play a greater percentage of the tournaments now. That means the fields will be better over the course of the year and more of Tom Watson, Hale Irwin, Tom Kite, Bruce Lietzke and Fuzzy Zoeller is a good thing.

This also means tournament directors and sponsors should be happier, something that has not happened much lately.

There are also rumblings that the Champions Tour is on the verge of tweaking its television presence. When you’re talking about a tour that is already working on its third set of broadcast partners in four years, no one should be all that surprised, but this might actually be good news. The speculation is that the tour’s policy board is considering a deal with ESPN to take over the tournaments to be telecast by CNBC, which shares the broadcast rights with the Golf Channel.

The CNBC association, pushed through by Finchem, has been a dud, although it did bring in some decent coin. Worth an estimated $15 million, it still has one year to go, but finding viewers on CNBC has been harder than finding a caddie driving a cart and no one would be shocked if the two parties agreed to go separate ways.

Expect the Champions Tour to be more fan-friendly than ever. Last year, there were a few experiments to see if that was the way to go. They dropped the ropes behind the last group of players so fans could get closer to the action. There were on-site clinics and instruction sessions. Players wore microphones and gave interviews during the round.

At first, there was a resistance to the microphone initiative, mainly from the core star group of Watson, Irwin and Kite, who regarded the measure as intrusive. However, they eventually relented, possibly realizing the last time they said something worth repeating on a golf course was, well, probably never.

More fan-friendly features this year include fans entering a lottery to become honorary observers inside the ropes and a “Caddie of the Day” program in which a few lucky fans are chosen to serve as caddies in the pro-am. By the way, caddies are permitted in carts during Champions Tour pro-am days and Champions Tour practice rounds -- only not Champions Tour tournament rounds, as we now know.

Critics may say that all Finchem has done is put a Band-Aid on a compound fracture, but we’ve got an entire year to see for ourselves. It could be intriguing to see the first Caddie of the Day who irritates Leonard Thompson and gets tossed into a lake.

Meanwhile, Finchem has his own problems, such as dealing with rebels Gilder, John Mahaffey and Green, who are all on the board. He could get such a headache, he may just wind up following his 2003 Champions Tour Golf Cart Rules and Regulations, climb into a cart and roar away.