No Country For Old Golfers
Why doesn’t anyone care about the Champions Tour? I realize most people could probably go down the PGA Tour Schedule and classify it something like “Tiger, Boring, Tiger, Tiger, Boring, Tiger, Boring, Boring, hey look, Tiger plays in that one too!”
But even among golf fans, the Champions Tour events are largely ignored. Is it because by the time these heavyweight players have been mostly relegated to the “Geezer Tour” fans figure it’s lost some of the excitement and glamour? I think ChiChi doing the ChaCha over there on the left in his sassy green pants begs to differ. You can’t even make the argument that it’s golf-lite or anything like that, since I seem to recall a certain 60-year-old recently holding his own with the kids for about 98 percent of a major tournament. Not to mention that this Greg Norman guy was close to doing the same last year. (And choked of course, but 1980s Norman choked too, it’s not a sign of aging.)
Champions Tour events are more like a gathering of all the best we’ve seen over the past couple decades. It’s The Beatles’ No. 1’s album. It’s the best of Aerosmith or The Police, except without the remastering. These are the masters. And really, what other sport is lucky enough to have the opportunity to relive history like this, even after Tiger and Phil and a slew of Asian teenagers have swooped in to take their place on the main stage? Imagine how much interest this concept would gather in other sports:
Football Let’s try this for a warm-up exercise. Raise your hand if you hate the Dallas Cowboys. Raise your hand if you hate the Denver Broncos. Ok, hands down. Now raise your hand if you’d like to see the early 90s Cowboys take on the late 90s Broncos. What, there’s still some hands down? Fine, raise your hand if you’d rather see that than watch the Detroit Lions get slaughtered again on Thanksgiving Day.
I thought as much.
Basketball If you were both alive and able to create memories when the Detroit “Bad Boys” had their run over Jordan’s Bulls and the Bulls saw their ultimate retribution come to pass in the following years, consider yourself lucky. Those were great times for the sport. But now we’re a mess of tattoos and a wedding dress, a failed baseball career, a sexual harassment suit (and maybe a couple other interesting lawsuits) later. Someone set up a rematch, same guys, same teams. This has the potential to be the greatest battle since “Bring It On III.”
Hockey Actually this might be a moot point once we get to hockey. Claude Lemieux came back last season? Theo Fleurry this year? I’m pretty sure Chris Chelios died five years ago and continues to shop out his reanimated corpse instead and no one ever noticed. The only difference here is that while it’s fun to see the old favorites strap on the pads and take to the ice again, most have proven that they can’t exactly hang with the young dogs anymore.
Baseball Well…the thing about baseball is that the further we reach back, the more we find out about them dipping into the Sauce. And I’m not talking about liquor. Or Hollandaise. I’m not denying that a meeting of Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Jose Canseco wouldn’t be entertainment, I’m just not sure an actual baseball game would ever break out.
The point is this with the Senior PGA, here’s a group that chooses not to just kick back in their mansions or their vacation homes in the Caribbean when they retire at age 50. This is a group that truly enjoys what they do and still do it pretty damn well. If only we, as spectators, were so lucky in all sports.
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