Those Rich Old Pros

By LEON JAROFF

The Des Moines Country Club had never seen anything like it. For a week in July, more than 250,000 Iowans, including Governor Tom Vilsack, came in droves to applaud, cheer and gawk at the stars. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED called the event, the 20th Senior U.S. Open golf tournament, "the biggest thing to hit the state since Pope John Paul II's visit," which happened 20 years earlier. The mere arrival in town of Arnold Palmer, about to turn 70, made headlines in the statewide newspaper, the Des Moines Register.

This hubbub in the heartland, yet another sign that the sports phenomenon known as the senior tour has become a fixture on the American scene, reflects a larger social trend: the greater acceptance of older people performing well--indeed, excellently--in a variety of pursuits. In golf, and more recently in tennis, players who quickened the pulse of sports fans a few decades ago--Palmer, Nicklaus and Trevino, for example, and Connors, McEnroe and Borg--are back on the courses and courts, and back in the news, striving in spirited competition with their peers.

These are more than just flights of nostalgia. On the Senior PGA Tour this year, prize money totaling more than $53 million--a record sum--will be awarded in 45 separate events. A senior golf-tournament win can bring as much as $347,000; two top performers, Hale Irwin, 54, and Gil Morgan, 53, have each earned more than $2 million a year in the past two years.

Though launched in the U.S. only six years ago by Jimmy Connors and sports entrepreneur Ray Benton, the senior-tennis circuit now conducts tournaments around the world. This year 20 events are scheduled at which $3.6 million in prizes will be handed out to players 35 and older. Now called the Worldwide Senior Tennis Circuit, it includes in its impressive galaxy such former stars as Connors, 47; John McEnroe, 40; Bjorn Borg, 43; Guillermo Vilas, 47; John Lloyd, 45; Yannick Noah, 39; Andres Gomez, 39; Henri Leconte, 36; and Mats Wilander, 35.

It is the golfers, the youngest of whom must be at least 50, who give emphasis to the word senior in the Senior PGA Tour. Seven players over 60 have won a total of eight tournaments, among them Mike Fetchick, who on his 63rd birthday won the Hilton Head Seniors International, making him the oldest winner ever on the pro circuit.

A close second is Gary Player, who at 62 won last year's Northville Long Island Classic. And two other competitors, Miller Barber and Charlie Sifford, last year accomplished equally difficult feats, shooting their ages or below--Barber shot a 67 two times, and Sifford, 76, shot a 74.

In a culture that still worships youth, it is noteworthy that corporate America sees so much bounty in backing these events. "Senior tennis and golf are important building tools for the relationships we have with our clients," says Tim Schwertfeger, head of the John Nuveen Co., a financial-management company based in Chicago that helped get the tennis circuit going and invests heavily in both sports. Companies are not only sponsoring the senior tournaments, they are also using several of the grizzled icons to hawk their products. Palmer has appeared in Pennzoil and Cooper Tire commercials, Lee Trevino, 59, and Connors for Cadillac. With intimate knowledge of the aches and pains of the aging athlete, Connors has been a natural for Nuprin, and Ray Floyd, 57, for Advil.

Two decades ago, Palmer, along with Barber, 68, and Don January, 69, were still competitive in the regular PGA Tour when they got senior golf off to its rousing start. Even today, though these oldsters play less frequently and finish well down in the field, they are still mobbed by the fans.

These days, says Irwin, "the golf tour has evolved from a parade of stars of great magnitude" to what he describes as "a highly competitive experience," one that Irwin himself epitomizes. While he projects less personality or flamboyance than Palmer or Nicklaus and evokes less passion from the gallery, he is an intense perfectionist who still competes in regular PGA Tour events and this season stands a good chance of being the senior tour's leading money winner for the third consecutive year. To critics of his lack of pizazz, Irwin responds, "Playing great golf ought to be enough."

At 54, he has withstood the challenge of the tour's freshman 50- and 51-year-olds who have won more than a third of all senior tournaments, and he scoffs at the notion that age 55 is the limit at which a golfer can compete for senior-tour leadership. "That's hogwash," Irwin says. "The age of 55 is now going to be pushed to 56, 57 and 58, because players are more in shape and more attuned to the keen competition."

In both golf and tennis, however, there have been a few concessions to age. Instead of the 72 holes that are standard on the PGA Tour, senior golfers usually play only 54, and they play on courses that are generally gentler and a couple of hundred yards shorter. Golf carts, forbidden on the regular tour, are allowed. The problem in tennis, McEnroe explains, "is that we've still got to run, and they haven't yet come up with a shrunken court." Seniors competition is limited to two sets, however, and if necessary a 10-point tie breaker instead of the regular best out of three.

That tie breaker doesn't sit too well with McEnroe, who jokingly calls the senior-tennis circuit the "dinosaur tour." "I think we should be playing two out of three sets," he says. "This way it's too quick, and most of the fans seem shocked that it's over." Also, he says, it doesn't test the players enough. "There should be at least some kind of fitness test involved."

Otherwise, McEnroe is enjoying the tour, still intent on winning, but more relaxed than ever and more involved with the folks in the stands. "The idea is to get closer to the fan," he explains. Literally closer too, because at each stop the tour erects a small, temporary stadium that enables everyone in the crowd to see the players up close. During the week of a tournament, the participants banter and mingle with the fans and sometimes set up tennis clinics for kids.

"I don't want to go out there and lose," McEnroe insists. Yet he has lost frequently to Connors, who won 12 of the first 14 tour events, and to others in the mid-1990s. But he did manage to put some personal difficulties behind him; he improved his concentration, worked hard at getting back into condition and last year won the No. 1 ranking in senior tennis.

But to McEnroe, winning is no longer everything. "I make more of an effort now to give people their money's worth," something he says (with a note of envy) that Connors does "brilliantly." That money's worth involves entertaining the fans, not only with serious, hotly contested tennis, but with banter and an occasional feigned tantrum, which McEnroe usually throws with a twinkle in his eye, over a line call. "In the old days, they'd fine me if I questioned calls. Now," he quips, "if I don't question line calls, I don't get paid. It's in my contract. I must do it twice a match."

Yet for all the entertainment, nostalgia and excellent play that the senior tours bring to their growing numbers of fans, it's the aging athletes who benefit most, and not just financially. Hale Irwin expressed it best: "The senior tour means that even at our age, we can still pursue the dream."