"I feel our tour is as competitive as it's ever been. Fan-friendly is a whole different gamut," Stevens said. "By creating exciting golf, you create better competition. I think the two kind of work hand in hand. I think we do a really good job of delivering a really competitive tournament that's exciting, but it's not a sterile environment. We want it to be a fun environment."
Fleisher is not so sure.
At the recent SAS Championship in Cary, N.C., Fleisher found himself tied for the first-round lead at Prestonwood Country Club. He later joked that he had a "gallery of one," pointing to his wife, Wendy. It wasn't that fans were flocking to other players; they just weren't there.
"I'm not quite sure that the audience is important as long as the sponsors are happy," Fleisher said. "I don't think the spectators that come out play a big part. I think the bottom line is that they [the PGA Tour] couldn't care less if there are 50,000 or 5,000."
More important than the three rounds of golf were the four pro-am days leading up to the tournament, Fleisher said.
"This Champions Tour is about corporate entertainment. That's what they're trying to sell, that's why we have the tour," Fleisher said. "It's about the pro-ams, it's about the going to the pro-am parties, it's about spending time with the amateurs. That was the big thing we've been told that we're offering now."
There have been discussions about celebrity pro-am tournaments similar to the popular Pebble Beach event on the PGA Tour, along with reviving a mixed team event with the LPGA Tour. This summer, a tournament in Minnesota invited nine older legendary players for a weekend competition.
"We're keeping our core, but we're starting to branch out a little bit to bring in a few more elements to the Champions Tour that we think the fans are going to like," said Stevens, who took over as president of the Champions Tour in June and has worked for the PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour.
What would help are some big names with even bigger personalities, particularly Greg Norman, who appears to have no intentions of leaving his own corporate empire (not to mention his new wife, tennis legend Chris Evert) to play more events.
The rookie class for next year includes three of the regular tour's most popular players - Hal Sutton, who is expected out in the next few weeks, as well as Tom Lehman and Fred Couples - but they don't seem capable of drawing the kind of attention that would turn the Champions Tour into must-see golf.
