Golfers Over 50 Dream of the Good Old Days

On one hand, turning 50 is a godsend for a professional golfer -- a one-way ticket to the Champions Tour where shorter, easier courses can rekindle a competitive fire grown cold with age.

And the money’s not bad either, as 14 players made more than $1 million in 2005.

On the other hand, the half-century mark is a curse -- golf’s cruel way of forcing players to own up to the idea that they are past their prime and no longer able to compete among the world’s best.

It’s a difficult admission to make in a day and age when more and more players have benefited from increased physical conditioning and have remained competitive enough into their late 40s that they have secured PGA Tour exemptions past the age of 50.

So as the Toshiba Classic gets underway today at Newport Beach Country Club, all 78 players in the field will battle a tight tree-lined course with tricky greens, but a handful of them also will be fighting to drown out the voice inside their heads that’s telling them maybe, just maybe, they should instead be in Orlando playing the PGA Tour’s Bay Hill Invitational.

“We have been good players for a long time and you just want to keep finding out how you stack up against the best,” said Tom Kite, 56, who split time between the Champions Tour and PGA Tour last year.

“At some point in time we understand we are not as good as we used to be, so we are fortunate we have the Champions Tour. But you still like to go out there and see if you can handle it.”

Kite didn’t handle it all that well last year.

He played in 12 PGA events, making the cut only three times, although he did hold the 54-hole lead at the Booz Allen Classic in June before finishing tied for 13th.

Kite, who won the Champions Tour event at Valencia last week, used a top-50 career money leaders exemption to play last year. It was the last year he could use that exemption, because he fell out of the top 50 after last season.

The 19-time PGA Tour winner and former U.S. Open champion said he didn’t expect the poor results he had.

“Did it surprise me? Yeah because I don’t expect to play poorly,” Kite said. “But it wasn’t just that I didn’t play well on the PGA Tour, I didn’t play well on the Champions Tour. It was a year of pretty poor golf.”

Among the Champions Tour players still fully exempt on the PGA Tour this year are Loren Roberts and Jay Haas, both of whom turned 50 within the past 18 months.

Both intend to take advantage of their exemptions and play a handful of PGA Tour events, even though they have been quite successful with a combined six victories in 28 Champions starts.

Old habits die hard.

Peter Jacobsen played the Bay Hill Invitational 18 times in the past 21 years, but is playing at Newport Beach for the first time because he lost his exempt status on the PGA Tour.

“It’s hard to let go of your tour career because you work so hard for 30 years to keep your tour card every year,” he said. “You think, ‘Oh, I can still play with Tiger,’ and then you realize you can’t and that’s hard. It’s tough to not be exempt out on the tour ... but I understand that time does come and go.”

Hale Irwin, 60, grasped that concept early on in his Champions Tour career. He committed to the tour almost from the day he turned 50 and has become the all-time leader in victories, with 44, and earnings, with $22,817,028.

“I don’t want to go out there and try to compete with Tiger [Woods] and Ernie [Els] on these 7,600-yard golf courses,” Irwin said. “That doesn’t thrill me one bit.”

“But,” he added, “that doesn’t mean I don’t still think about it.”