Old Golfers Never Fade

By Tom Callahan

They join the senior tour, where the money keeps growing

Using an overlapping grip, sentimental people are holding on to old golfers for dear life and good reason. No sport lets go of champions easily, but in golf the replacements have been singularly unsatisfying: too blond, too bland and too many. On the P.G.A. tour, young strangers are kept in such supply that a different one seems to win every week, usually in a playoff. They all swing the same way--correctly. Their skills are undeniable. They appear able to do anything on a golf course except enjoy each other's company.

But there is another tour, too extensive to be just a farewell tour, where the golfers are recognizable at a distance by a loop in a swing, a Hit in a walk, a Panama hat. They are misnamed "seniors." As the minimum age is 50, not 65, "champions" would be better. From a two-tournament, $250,000 reunion in 1980, a 27-stop, $5.8 million phenomenon has come about. For men who once shared cars and pulled trailers, rich memories are suddenly negotiable. Don January, 54, a slim Texan whose long lines are all connected at right angles, remembers when, "after a whole year was over, and I got to looking at it, I might have made $12,000 or $16,000, and I might have ranked ninth to 18th on the money list, and I might have covered expenses. I sure had nothing left." As a senior, January earned $237,571 last year, and he has won $132,000 so far this spring. Miller Barber, 53, who once made an identity out of having no identity, now makes $231,008.

Where does the money come from? This is sport's mystery of life, and not even Steve Young, Magic Johnson, George Steinbrenner and the Dallas Cowboys know the answer positively. Only one senior tournament is televised, but real estate deals and deductible charities are involved. The trail of the old golfers is defined by condominiums, and, on two Pro-Am days a week, wealthy hackers or executives with expense accounts pay several thousand dollars apiece to have their putts read by Sam Snead, 71. "The funny thing is," Snead says without laughing, "my right eye is gone: no depth perception at all. I have to walk to the cup to see if a putt is uphill or down."

His affection for money is as legendary as he is, but since Snead profited by only $14,526 last year (admittedly, in 1937 he had to play all year and win four tournaments for that kind of prize money), something more than dollars must be at stake here. "I swing my driver now," he says, "but when I get to hitting those off-color shots, I want to throw the clubs in the closet forever and go hunting. But the funny thing is, I'm getting so I don't like to kill anything any more. And if I did put the clubs away ..." He laughs and says, "But I guess a missed golf shot isn't the end of the world, although you can see it from here."

The funny thing is, the end of the world is a blind shot from anywhere, and on this tour almost no attention is paid to hazards out of view, to Julius Boros' quintuple-bypass heart operation two years back or George Bayer's artificial hip joint. "The money's not a detraction, believe me," says Bayer, "and being back among old friends is great too. But the most important thing is having a place to compete again. It's a second chance at life, really." Guy Wolstenholme, 53, says, "We could all be on the scrap heap." That name is familiar only in international golf, but Wolstenholme, an Englishman who has played most of a distinguished career in Australia, won $72,757 last year to finish eighth in the senior standings. "I've lost a few yards' distance since December," he lightly notes. "Cancer. Not only me, all of us are lucky to be playing. Oh, I just take one club more for cancer."

Rod Funseth has also been ill but playing through his worries on the senior tour. In 17 years on the regular circuit, this charming pessimist won just three tournaments but accumulated $646,811. Only a few play for history; the rest play for money. Last year he turned 50 and won $120,366, but Funseth's measure of a year is no longer cash. "It has been a blessing to play," he says.

Possibly influenced by the courage and candor all around him, Arnold Palmer has just taken to wearing a small hearing aid at 54. "I never thought I'd do it," he says, "but I needed one, so I'm doing it. And you know what? Hitting a golf ball has a whole new different sound." A tour on the march, and Palmer at the point, is certainly familiar. "The galleries have been mostly our own vintage," says Palmer, who earned $106,590 last year. "But the younger set is starting to be attracted too." Though carts are essential for some and permissible for all, Palmer does not approve. So Creamy Carolan, his clown-faced old caddie, 68, is sometimes alone against the machines. Says Creamy: "All I have is memories."

On the practice tee, where Roberto De Vicenzo is hitting balls beside Bob Goalby, and Billy Casper is looking unusually rotund in billowing plus fours, memories are almost enough. There is Mike Souchak. In 1960, when Palmer became Palmer, Souchak could have won the U.S. Open, and everything might have been different. Next to him is Orville Moody, whose only tour victory was the 1969 Open, about the last time he made a putt. Then Doug Sanders, who lost the British Open in 1970 on a 2 1/2-footer. "Sometimes I go as long as five minutes," Sanders says, "without thinking about that." The rookie, Dave Marr, muses down the row, "Jack Burke, Jay Hebert, Paul Runyan [61, 61 and 75], they all touched me in some way." And he smiles: "Maybe just beat my brains out. No, there really was a time when everybody had to help everybody else or nobody would have made it."

As January says, "We were all teachers first, so we knew how to show each other, and we didn't mind. We were merchandisers too. A lot of us went out on the tour so we didn't have to sell shoes in the wintertime." Generally, he faults his own generation, himself included, for resolving that its children would have everything better, depriving them in that way. "They don't play any better now than we did. There are just so many of them that play so darn well. But if they never had to win enough on Friday to pay the rent, I wonder if deep down they can know what's really inside them." Or exactly who they are. --By Tom Callahan