The PGA Tour Champions, bless their hearts, that esteemed club of gentlemen who remember when golf shoes had actual spikes and the pace of play was more a leisurely stroll than a competitive sprint, has apparently decided that retirement plans are so last century. That $10 million pension fund, a nice little nest egg for chaps who once ruled the fairways with such grace, hasn't just shrunk; it's been, shall we say, creatively reallocated. Or, as one distinguished player put it, channeling his inner King Lear, "This is highway robbery!"
The official line, spun by folks who clearly have their heads in the clouds of high finance while the rest of us are stuck on the ground with our divots, is that the Tour is now a "for-profit enterprise." I suppose that means looking after the folks who built this whole money-making machine is now as outdated as a persimmon driver or the idea that a round of golf should take less than four hours.
Billy Andrade, a man who still believes in things like fairness and getting paid for work done, made his feelings abundantly clear. He pointed out the rather glaring irony of millions being poured into shiny new "Championship Series" and some other vaguely named league while the pension fund for the very guys who paved the Tour's golden path gets unceremoniously kicked to the curb. It’s like finding out your favorite art museum is selling off its Rembrandts to fund a series of interpretive dance performances about Van Gogh.
Others are chiming in, their questions hanging in the air like a shanked drive. How can there be a king's ransom for prize money scattered across events like confetti at a particularly over-the-top wedding, yet not a single penny for the pioneers who made it all possible? David Toms, a fellow who understands financial statements about as well as he understands a tricky downhill putt, found the whole fiscal approach utterly baffling. Scott McCarron, bless his directness, called the whole mess "just awful," and honestly, who can blame him? It’s a sentiment that probably hits harder than any perfectly judged chip shot.
Now, there are always those who offer the sensible, if soul-crushingly dull, perspective. Paul Goydos, a man who seems to have a PhD in navigating the PGA Tour's financial labyrinth, suggested that perhaps the Tour is just trying to "run it like a business." And in the hallowed, and apparently quite ruthless, world of modern golf commerce, "business" seems to mean stripping the gold plating off the old statues to fund… well, more gold plating for newer, shinier statues, I suppose. The older champions, meanwhile, are left contemplating a retirement that’s decidedly less golden than they’d earned, a rather blunt reminder that in the grand, glamorous circus of professional sports, sentimentality doesn't exactly keep the lights on.