Those of you who like to rummage around the vast and varied golfing websites – and these days, you can just about get hole-by-hole coverage of the Dullatur Captain & Secretary’s Perpetual Rosebowl if you dig deep enough – will have probably discovered that the European Senior Tour qualifying school final finished last weekend.
As far as a golfing life beginning at 50 is concerned though, the opportunities for those players looking for some active senior service are few and far between. From a Q-School field of 60 players, only five full cards were available for the 2016 season. And the season itself, if you take away the majors and the end of year Tour championship, features only six regular events. It’s hardly a hectic diary. Faced with dwindling sponsorship and a general tightening of the purse strings in recent years, the over-50s tour on this side of the Atlantic has been seriously savaged.
Keith Pelley, the new chief executive of the European Tour, may be focussing his energies on making the main circuit a more powerful, lucrative global force but he is well aware that the struggling Senior Tour needs a significant shot in the arm. There’s no hidden pot of gold for the golden oldies but it needs some fresh investment, some fresh ideas and some fresh impetus.
“It's not where we want the Senior Tour to be,” conceded Pelley. “On the main tour, I engaged with the players, whether it was Rory (McIlroy), Justin (Rose) or any other player and I took their feedback and guidance and tried to develop a plan. A similar planning process is now happening with the Senior Tour. We put out a detailed questionnaire to all the members in November and those have come back in. We have brought in an external group to look at it too and I think the Senior Tour in 2018 will be very different to what it is today.
“First and foremost, the players want more events and consistent events in terms of a schedule. Sometimes there's a gap of five or six weeks between events, which I don't feel is acceptable. We're looking at a condensed schedule in terms of the time of the year with tournaments every other week. This won't happen overnight, but the Senior Tour needs a transformation.”
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