It’s a fair question: What keeps pros over 60 staying with the grind on senior circuit?
Many players on PGA Tour Champions don’t need the money and, Lord knows, they certainly don’t need the aggravation, the countless reminders—higher scores, more fragile bodies (as well as egos?)—that their best days in a profession they chose long ago are long behind them.
Besides, let’s face it, life on the road (sorry, Jack Kerouac) can be far from romantic. Ask Michael Allen, 65, an eight-time tour winner on the over-50 circuit.
A few months ago, on the evening prior to the first round of the Galleri Classic in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Allen and his wife, Cynthia, were planning to celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary with a meal at a nice restaurant in town. They had to change plans, however, when Cynthia’s plane arrived a few hours late.
“We went to In-N-Out,” Allen said.
Or ask Mark O’Meara, 67, a two-time PGA Tour major champion who tied for 57th in March at the Hoag Classic in Newport Beach, earning a grand total of $3,800. Factor in the $3,500 he spent paying for his caddie, transportation, lodging and meals and … well, you get the picture.
“I said to somebody, ‘I’d rather stay home, buy my wife a nice purse or a pair of shoes and I’m a winner,’” O’Meara said. “I’m not necessarily a winner out here.”
Not many players are, especially those in their 60s. Which, on the eve of the biggest tournament of the year, the U.S. Senior Open at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island, that prompts the question, posed to O’Meara and about a dozen others in recent months:
With all due respect, what the heck are you still doing out here?
“That’s a great question,” O’Meara replied. “I ask myself that all the time.”
There is no single answer, but the first thing they came up over and over is that they still love to compete, or as Jerry Kelly, who has made a killing on the senior tour with 11 wins and nearly $13 million earned, put it, “beat each other’s brains out.”
“I can’t think of anything I would rather do than win a golf tournament,” said Kirk Triplett, 62, who has won eight times since turning the big Five-0h in 2012, but not once since 2019. “I’m trying to solve the puzzle. Still.”
Which is what led Rocco Mediate, 61, to give the tour another shot this year after seriously considering quitting in 2023 when he registered just one top-10 finish in 21 appearances. “You can be hitting it bad on the range,” Mediate said, “but when the bell rings, the whole ballgame changes. You get on the first tee and go, ‘I can do this.’”
Jerry Kelly has won 11 times on the senior circuit.
Ben Jared
His wife, Jessica, however, knows her husband very well. She didn’t buy the retirement talk for one second. “They have done this their whole lives,” she said. “They really don’t know how to do anything else. They would be happy dying out here because they love it so much.” (Mediate finally came clean: “We’re all nuts.”)
“I guess I’m kind of like a trained seal. It’s what I know how to do best … I’m terrible at giving up. If there is a mountain in front of me, I just figure I can climb it.”