Should The Majors Be Open To Geriatrics?

Legendary South African golfer Gary Player made history at the 2008 US Masters as he racked up the record for entries in the major, clocking his 51st appearance in the tournament. It was an emotional moment for Player, but an even more emotional moment for Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie, who missed out on a place at the 2008 US Masters only to watch a geriatric enter and fail to make the cut.

Player’s pointless appearance at the Masters was not, technically at least, the cause of Montgomerie’s relegation to the sidelines. However, the fact of the matter is that a gifted golfer missed out on the event while a has-been, who’ll soon be negotiating the course on a walker, had the opportunity to participate in the tournament.

There is clearly something not quite right about this situation.

Since time immemorial professional golfers have been rewarded for a win in any given tournament with automatic qualification for that tournament for years to come. In fact a PGA tournament win guarantees a golfer a PGA card for years to come.

It therefore follows that golf’s biggest events dispense its biggest rewards – in this case over egging the pudding by giving majors winners lifelong entries to the majors that they win.

As much as one might admire the noble sentiments behind this policy, the fact remains that life-long really means life-long and some players, as Player has illustrated, may live very long indeed.

This means that in the foreseeable future we face the prospect of watching aged golfers hobble over the greens at the world’s toughest golf tournaments, a situation that favours neither spectators nor the venerable golfers themselves. William Hill’s 25,000 to 1 odds on Player winning the US Masters says it all - his participation was nothing less than absurd.

With the Majors representing the pinnacle of golf, it would make far more sense for the tournament organisers to organise a separate seniors event and replace aged players with a crop of the finest young talent in the world of golf. Gifted youngsters, whilst not likely to prevail on the biggest stage, would benefit from the learning experience and provide good entertainment value for spectators.

Golf is one of the only sports in the world where ageing players don’t routinely take the opportunity to make graceful exits from their game once their skills go into decline. Despite being amongst the top earners in sport, ageing golfers tend to hang around in top level tournaments for years rather than cashing in on their massive retirement funds.

Fans are then subjected to the bizarre spectacle of the once omnipotent gradually morphing into the pitiful on some of sport’s biggest stages. If recent form is anything to go by, South Africa’s Ernie Els is well set to illustrate this trend. Els deserted his post at golf’s summit years ago, and is now accelerating down the slippery slope of golf redundancy.

One solution to this issue would be to grant golfers over the age of fifty an automatic qualification for senior tours once they’ve gone a year without a top ten finish in the PGA or European Tour. This would ensure that decades long player rivalries remained intact and playing fields remained level. Furthermore older players who remained in form would be free to continue their participation at the top level.