Sport: Old Golfers Never Fade

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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."