I find the Champions Tour—the over the hill 50 plus guys still loving to play and loving to get PGA Tour paychecks just OK—not great, not overly exciting just pretty darn OK and that’s well, that’s pretty darn OK with me.
The overall packaging of the tour is different than the regular PGA Tour. They usually play 3 rounds instead of 4, and that gives the players an additional day for more pro-ams, and that gives more people a chance to experience playing and watching the champions in a relaxed mode. One other major factor that makes this tour so worthwhile is the charities that benefit from its existence. Never forget for one minute that charity is always the biggest property the tours have. The total amount of money raised by all the PGA Tours combined is fast approaching $2 billion. It literally changes lives and that is way more than OK.
A couple of weeks ago John Riegger won an event on the Champions Tour—he just turned 50 in June and went to Q school last fall got his card and is set to go—Riegger never won on the PGA Tour—so he got his mulligan and took full advantage of it right away. Good for him. Yesterday Esteban Toledo won his second champions Tour event defeating Kenny Perry in a 3 hole playoff in Montreal, Canada—Toledo had never won in a long PGA Tour career—yes, indeed it is more than O.K. with me.
These are just two stories of the Champions Tour.