In its infancy, the Senior PGA Tour provided a stage on which Arnold Palmer could still play the role of "The King." Other past golfing heroes were his court, providing their own fans with a few more lasting memories. By the time it reached adulthood - marking its 21st birthday last year - the tour was in trouble.
With the exception of the four major championships and a few other events, attendance was dropping. Corporate interest was waning, too, as evidenced by the lack of television exposure and some sponsors who failed to renew their contracts.
The competition, though often top-notch, wasn't compelling. Watching a bunch of sometimes grumpy old men beat each other down for exorbitant purses was not as exciting as, say, watching Tiger Woods do that to the rest of the PGA Tour.
"It became more like the regular tour; it became too serious," Tom Kite said recently. "If we try to compete with the regular tour, we're going to come up short. We can't go head-to-head and do the same things they do. We've got to do different things.
"Last year, and maybe the year before that, was kind of an awakening for the players out here and for the tour staff. If we didn't shape up and improve some things, we were going to be going the wrong way. But I think things have improved this year. I think we're putting out a good product."
In Baltimore for a two-week run - the Greater Baltimore Classic begins Friday at Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley and ends Sunday, followed by the U.S. Senior Open at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills from June 27 to 30 - the senior tour will put on a happier face than the one it has worn in recent years.
It will be more fan-friendly. For example, this week's event will offer a question-and-answer session after the pairings party Tuesday evening at the Hunt Valley Marriott, as well as contests. Winners will walk inside the ropes during the tournament or caddie a few holes for the pairings of pros and amateurs during the pro-am.
Unlike its early years, the senior tour's audience includes a far wider demographic range. The galleries are much younger, encompassing everyone from grade school kids to grandparents, with most of the fans now being baby boomers who know a 7-wood from a 7-iron.
"Golf fans, particularly senior tour fans, are avid golfers, and they're always searching for ways to improve," said Jeff Monday, the senior tour's chief of operations. "The senior tour certainly lends itself in multiple ways to provide an up-close and personal experience."
For those fresh off the regular PGA Tour, it can be a difficult adjustment.
Playing to the audience
"It is a serious competition, but it's a different kind of competition, and it's important for the guys to understand that," said Andy North, a two-time U.S. Open champion who splits his duties between playing the senior tour and analyzing play on the regular tour for ESPN.
It was obvious the past couple of years to tour officials that changes needed to be made.
"What we ran into last year was taking a look at all aspects of the senior tour, and the experiences for the spectator on-site, the TV viewer, for the sponsors, and all our constituents and clients," Monday said. "The No. 1 key is the players. While they still compete at a very high level, they're also very accessible and approachable."
Monday and other senior tour officials hoped that breaking down whatever barriers still existed between players and fans would bring a new audience. It has resulted in on-course interviews during telecasts, additional pro-ams before events and other forums to raise interest.
"What we have to do is make sure that we're putting the players in situations where they can utilize their personality traits," Monday said.
The telecasts, a huge part of the senior tour's past success and future survival, now include veteran teaching pro Jim McLean re-creating shots - both good and bad - so viewers can pick up tips. Also fans e-mail questions to be answered on air.
"We want to make this an interactive medium," Monday said.
But there is no denying that the senior tour, though not in the trouble it was in a year ago, is still clearly in transition.
Old legends such as Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, as well as superstar personalities Lee Trevino and Chi Chi Rodriguez, are winding down their storied careers while former PGA Tour fan favorites Ben Crenshaw and Fuzzy Zoeller are adjusting to their new lives.
Zoeller brought the senior tour a much-needed boost of publicity by winning the Senior PGA Championship this month at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio.
Other players on the tour have impressive resumes but less visibility. The golf played by Dave Stockton, Ray Floyd, Hale Irwin and Larry Nelson, and later by Bruce Fleisher and Allen Doyle - has been high level. Yet hardly anyone noticed.
"The senior tour can't make superstars," Fleisher said. "The only superstars we have are players who were superstars on the regular tour."
Bunch of free-swingers
Irwin said he thinks it's time for the senior tour to run its own show, perhaps with its own commissioner. According to a report in Sports Illustrated last month, there was a heated meeting between some players and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem regarding several issues May 7 in Kansas City, Mo.
"I think we need to operate the senior tour as a separate business, still under the [regular] tour's umbrella," Irwin said a week before the meeting. "I think we should go out and be soliciting our own business deals, our own marketing agenda and not be hogtied to what the tour is doing."
Bob Combs, the PGA Tour's vice president for public relations and communications, said that is not likely to happen.
"The tour's view is that the current structure has served us very well and it's a good model," said Combs, echoing the sentiments of Finchem. "That model has been very effective through the genesis and growth of the senior tour."
Doyle, who made the PGA Tour at 47 after a distinguished amateur career, blames tour officials for the troubles that have afflicted the senior tour. Doyle, the defending champion this week at Hayfields, said they should have ensured that he, Fleisher and others received greater visibility.
"Where the tour has failed is they have guys like Bruce, guys like myself - and you can come up with a handful of names - where if they started 3 1/2 years ago marketing us properly, we would have been viewed as more of a star than we are," Doyle said.
"We certainly wouldn't be in the same league as [Tom] Watson and [Tom] Kite and Crenshaw. It's one of those things that [the tour] never had to do before and then after the fact, when they realized they needed to," he said, "it was too late ... then people get to a point where they want to panic."
TV not on the ball
One alarm sounded last year when the senior tour saw its already-minuscule ratings numbers nose-dive with the move from ESPN to CNBC. If leaving ESPN for the hard-to-find business-oriented network proved a puzzling decision, it was compounded by the fact that CNBC's telecasts were mostly on tape delay.
"We've got to do a better job with our TV," Stockton said last month. "We took a real hit when our ratings dropped as much as they did last year. On the local level, everything is fine. But you also want it to be watched by millions of people."
This year, 23 of CNBC's 29 telecasts (the most of any tour) will be shown live, usually in the same time slot. Through last month's TD Waterhouse Classic, the ratings had increased on the average of 6 percent a telecast from last year, with 211,000 households and 256,000 fans 18 and older estimated to be tuned in.
"We knew going into it that it would take some time to build an audience," Monday said. "CNBC was committed to that. This was going to be a franchise position for them to do sports. Having that commitment to profile the senior tour was obviously attractive, too. We're very pleased with the production quality and the talent this year."
The slowly improving audience might be enough of a carrot to keep some sponsors from spending their advertising dollars elsewhere, but the previous drop in ratings and the move to CNBC caused a few companies to pull the plug.
State Farm Insurance, which sponsored the State Farm Senior Classic at Hayfields last year and at Hobbit's Glen Golf Club in Columbia the previous three years, opted out after its contract ended last summer. The tournament is without a title sponsor this year.
"We saw a real steady decline in ratings, not only for our event, but across the board on the senior tour," said Matthew Greer, assistant public affairs director for the Bloomington, Ill.-based company. "There was only about one-quarter of the viewers last year than there had been before."
State Farm is still involved in sponsoring more than a handful of other sporting events on the professional and collegiate levels, including a tournament on the LPGA Tour.
Greer sees the senior tour's problems being two-fold. "The PGA Tour is so strong because of Tiger," he said, "and the big names like Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are not playing in as many events. That's really hurt the senior tour."
Power of telling stories
Trying to find the perfect balance between competition and entertainment is another tricky equation. If the players are constantly yukking it up, then why should the public take them seriously? But if players remain the steely-eyed automatons they were on the regular tour, will fans stay interested?
For the senior tour to recapture a part of the audience it once had - unless Woods suddenly retires, most golf fans mainly are watching the regular tour - it will need to intersperse the story lines of players such as Fleisher and Doyle with the more familiar names such as Kite, Watson and Bruce Lietzke.
"I think the senior tour is past the stage of relying on one person, on an Arnold or Jack," said Stockton, a former PGA champion who was the senior tour's top player in 1992 and 1993.
"Bruce Fleisher's a good story, and so is Allen Doyle, but they're not superstars. If people would just stop and tell stories about those players, that's what makes the senior tour have strength and depth."
It will also be vital for the senior tour that popular players such as Crenshaw and Zoeller regain their competitive edge, and that those personalities at the end of their regular tour careers - such as Craig Stadler, Peter Jacobsen and Greg Norman - look to recapture some of their lost magic among the 50-and-over set.
Zoeller doesn't think he should do anything different than he did on the regular tour.
"As far as going out of my way to entertain, I don't think of it that way," he said. "I'm not sure anybody does who plays it for the challenges that it brings. But I think it's good positive stuff."
While the prize money being offered is up to a senior tour record of more than $60 million, including $2.4 million for the Open, the perception has changed only slightly. Perhaps these aren't just grumpy old men flying high with the help of life's greatest golden parachute.
If not, in which direction are they heading?
"I think a key factor for the future of the senior tour is to make sure we differentiate ourselves from other professional golf," Monday said.
"The senior tour is unique. We have unique players and we have unique opportunities that we can do on-site and in telecasts that might not fit within other professional golf," he said. "If we can provide a new experience for the fan, then it's going to be all that much better for the senior tour."
Money-winners
Yearly leading money-winners on the Senior PGA Tour since its inception in 1980.
Yr. Player Winnings
1980 Don January $44,100
1981 Miller Barber $83,136
1982 Miller Barber $106,890
1983 Don January $237,571
1984 Don January $328,597
1985 Peter Thomson $386,724
1986 Bruce Crampton $454,299
1987 C. C. Rodriguez $509,145
1988 Bob Charles $533,929
1989 Bob Charles $725,887
1990 Lee Trevino $1,190,518
1991 Mike Hill $1,065,657
1992 Lee Trevino $1,027,002
1993 Dave Stockton $1,175,944
1994 Dave Stockton $1,402,519
1995 Jim Colbert $1,444,386
1996 Jim Colbert $1,627,890
1997 Hale Irwin $2,343,364
1998 Hale Irwin $2,861,945
1999 Bruce Fleisher $2,515,705
2000 Larry Nelson $2,708,005
2001 Allen Doyle $2,553,582
On the rise
The total yearly prize money and number of events for the Senior PGA Tour:
Year Events Prize Money
1980 2 $250,000
1981 5 $750,000
1982 11 $1,372,000
1983 18 $3,364,768
1984 24 $5,156,000
1985 27 $6,076,000
1986 28 $6,300,000
1987 35 $8,700,000
1988 37 $10,500,000
1989 41 $14,195,000
1990 42 $18,323,968
1991 42 $19,788,218
1992 42 $21,025,000
1993 43 $26,250,000
1994 44 $28,850,000
1995 44 $33,300,000
1996 44 $37,800,000
1997 43 $41,750,000
1998 42 $45,100,000
1999 45 $49,050,000
2000 45 $54,100,000
2001 44 $58,250,000
2002 42 $60,500,000*
*-Estimated
Greater Baltimore Classic
When:Friday through Sunday
Where: Hayfields Country Club, Hunt Valley
Par: 36-36--72
Length:7,031 yards
Purse:$1.45 million, with $217,500 to winner
2001 winner:Allen Doyle
TV: PAX (Friday, 1-3 p.m.); CNBC (Saturday, Sunday, 2-4 p.m.)
Tickets: One-day grounds badge, $30; five-day pass, including pro-am events, $85. Information: 410-584-9382
U.S. Senior Open
When:June 27-30
Where: Caves Valley Golf Club, Owings Mills
Par: 35-36--71
Length:7,005 yards
Purse:$2.4 million, with $430,000 to winner
2001 winner:Bruce Fleisher
TV: ESPN (Thursday, 1-1:30 p.m., 4-6 p.m.); ESPN (Friday, noon-2 p.m., 4-6 p.m.); NBC (Saturday, Sunday, 3-6 p.m.)
Tickets:Weekly packages of $250 and $125 an admission are available, as are four-day championship tickets for $100 each and three-day (Monday through Wednesday) practice tickets for $50 each. Information: 410-654-2270.