Commentary : Old Tennis Formula Pays for Golf, Baseball

The World Senior Tennis Open has come to Washington. On display are the likes of Roy Emerson, Marty Riessen, Cliff Drysdale and, in doubles, Ken Rosewall. Today, the winner at Congressional Country Club gets $25,000 in singles. The final match will even be on TV nationally on ESPN.

Tennis, too?

Most sports fans know that a Senior PGA Tour event is held almost every week for Gary Player, Arnold Palmer and Co. Total purses for the 37-week-a-year circuit are now in the $9-million range. Also, for several years, there has been a spate of coast-to-coast old-timers’ baseball games for gentlemen like Bob Feller and Hank Aaron. The old-timers’ game that was held in RFK Stadium for six straight years, starting in 1982, drew an average of more than 25,000 a year.

What’s going on?

For a nation that is supposed to worship youth and discard anyone with gray hair, a bald spot or a pot belly, America certainly seems to have a place in its heart--and wallet--for athletes who retired decades ago. Now, they’re coming back again for a long, sweet and fairly lucrative encore.

Perhaps the one man least surprised by this trend is Al Bunis who says, matter of factly, “I invented it.” By which he means the Senior Tennis Tour. However, since his brainchild--then called the Grand Masters circuit--was born way back in ‘72, and was drawing crowds as large as 8,000 in ‘75, he might as well claim he invented the entire oldsters phenomenon.

“People told me I was crazy. Friends laughed in my face and walked away when I told them I was going to try to get people to buy tickets to watch middle-aged athletes perform,” says Bunis, 64, who was a ranked U.S. tennis player in his day, then retired young from a well-to-do business career. “The players themselves didn’t even believe it. Fortunately, I believed it. . . . The golfers have copied the idea and I salute ‘em. They’ve done a brilliant job. But we started it.”

Frank Sedgman did not take Bunis seriously until the promoter took him to an airline counter, personally, and paid his fare from London to Milwaukee to Melbourne, so Sedgman could play in the first two tournaments 16 years ago.

Since then, old-folks games have been a heartwarming boomlet, giving a charming alternative to fans who want something more or different than current big-time sports can offer.

Before Jake LaMotta starts working on his rabbit punches or Sam Huff goes out in the back yard to practice piling on, we should note that, so far, only a few sports have worked for old-timers. Even Bunis, after talking to Bob Cousy and Oscar Robertson, doubts that a senior National Basketball Assn. circuit has a hot future.

In tennis, golf and baseball, the players of earlier eras--especially those of the ‘50s and ‘60s who are still young enough to perform well--offer a sharp contrast to the leading performers in those sports today.

Palmer, Player, Billy Casper and Chi Chi Rodriguez seem like charismatic crowd pleasers compared with most current stars--especially Americans. “All the same,” says Bunis of U.S. golf pros.

By the same token, tennis greats like Rosewall, Emerson and Rod Laver (who played the senior circuit for a couple of years), have come to symbolize the last period of sportsmanship and gentlemanly behavior in tennis. “Bad manners and arguments were not tolerated in their time,” says Bunis. “You couldn’t do that foolishness.”

Two of the most dramatic old-timers’ events of the ‘80s have occurred in Washington. The first was Luke Appling, at the age of 75, hitting a home run off Warren Spahn. National TV news loved it, with Spahn chasing Appling around the bases, trying to swat him with his glove and Appling faking a heart attack at home plate. Appling says he got 4,000 fan letters.

Even more thrilling than Appling’s pop-fly homer were the historic back-to-back holes-in-one by Arnold Palmer on the same hole (No. 3) at Avenel Farm on consecutive days in the 1986 Chrysler Cup. No professional golfer, young or old, American or foreign, had ever pulled off that trick. Palmer did it at age 56. “I’ve had some things happen to me, but never anything close to that,” Palmer gushed just a few seconds after the 10-million-to-one shot came in.

Senior events have, in a few cases, become so popular that athletes in their prime feel the pinch. It’s no secret that the LPGA thinks that it has been hurt, more in image than in dollars, by the popularity of the Senior Tour. In baseball, the 50th All-Star game in Chicago in 1986 was, in many minds, upstaged by a wonderful old-timers’ game that drew 26,000 to Comiskey Park the day before.

Senior tennis isn’t in danger of posing any such problems for its sport. Despite the fact that its athletes, like Rosewall at 53, are in fantastic shape for their age, the 45-and-over tennis tour has never drawn a crowd of more than 5,500 in the United States. The problem in tennis is that the game is so hard, you can’t fake it; consequently, few seniors can cut the mustard. Only eight men are in a senior singles field at its 15 to 20 events a year.

“The best-conditioned player almost always wins,” says Bunis. “The players have less heavy artillery and play a more cerebral game--cat and mouse. If you’re not in great shape, you’ll be cut to ribbons.”

Laver left the senior circuit because he could not find the time, at 48, to maintain such a level of fanatical fitness. Besides Sedgman, Rosewall and Torben Ulrich, few have succeeded at it for long. Still, the lure remains strong. Like Melvin Purvis chasing John Dillinger, sometimes a man just can’t call off the hunt. If you can’t beat ‘em young, why not outlast ‘em? Player has done it to Palmer in golf. And Rosewall, known as the greatest player never to win Wimbledon, has done it to Laver.