As Loren Roberts took his victory walk down the 18th fairway at Baltimore Country Club during the final round of the inaugural Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship last year, he was greeted with polite applause. Tom Watson and Fred Funk drew significantly louder cheers.
It didn't surprise Roberts, who was about to win by six strokes.
"You have one guy who's a legend and the other guy who's very popular and is from Maryland," Roberts said recently. "I was just happy to be winning the golf tournament."
While fans are still looking for nostalgia from a tour that started out nearly 30 years ago as a way for the PGA Tour to build on the popularity of its players who had turned 50, the Champions Tour has changed dramatically in recent years.
Showmanship, once at the core of the success of the Senior Tour, the former name for the Champions Tour, has been replaced by gamesmanship. Grinning is no longer as commonplace as grinding, with players taking on more difficult golf courses in pursuit of purses larger than the ones they once played for on the regular tour.
"It's become very competitive, and not as much fun," said Bruce Fleisher, who went from winning once late in his PGA Tour career to a Senior Tour superstar who won seven times in his first season and 14 events in his first three years. "I don't think it will ever go back to the other way."
Certainly not this week, when the Champions Tour returns to Baltimore for the season's final major tournament.
With Watson out for the remainder of the year because of hip-replacement surgery, last year's biggest draw at Baltimore Country Club has been replaced by a committee of blue-collar players.
"Instead of there being six or seven guys to beat every week, there's 15," said Roberts, who has already won as many tournaments (eight) in three seasons on the Champions Tour as he did in 25 years on the PGA Tour. "That is the direction this has been moving."
Champions Tour president Mike Stevens said players can still engage the crowd with their shotmaking as Senior Tour legends such as Chi Chi Rodriguez and Lee Trevino once did with their theatrics.
Stevens points to this year's results: Of the first 25 events, 13 have been won by one stroke or in a playoff, with nine multiple champions. Despite increasing the length of the courses and the speed of the greens, the overall scoring average is up only a little more than a stroke, to 71.69.
