With golf's senior tour coming to the desert in 2023, here's a quick status update
When Darren Clarke won the Senior British Open Sunday in Scotland, it marked the end of the major championship season on the PGA Tour Champions for 2022. While the tour will still play official events into November, the focus on the 50-and-over tour now switches to who will qualify for the Charles Schwab Cup championship.
But the focus for desert golf fans can also start to shift to eight months from now, when the PGA Tour Champions returns to the Coachella Valley with the Galleri Classic at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage. With the senior tour not playing an event of any kind in the desert since the mid-1990s, many local fans might not have been paying attention to what the senior golfers have been doing.
There is always interesting golf on the PGA Tour Champions level, even if the tour doesn’t get nearly the attention the younger players do. So here’s where the PGA Tour Champions sits at the moment, looking forward to a desert return in 2023.
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The five majors
With Clarke winning the Senior British Open Sunday, the PGA Tour Champions has seen five different winners of its five majors (yes, five majors) this year. Some are familiar names like Clarke, Steve Stricker (The Tradition) and Padraig Harrington (U.S. Senior Open), and some are not as familiar, like Steve Alker (Senior PGA Championship) and Jerry Kelly (Senior Players Championship). That shows that there is a depth of talent on the senior tour that many casual fans of the 50-and-over circuit might not appreciate.
Who is Steve Alker?
Take a look at the Charles Schwab Cup standings (the PGA Tour Champions version of the chase fort the FedEx Cup on the PGA Tour) and you’ll see Alker’s name at the top of the money list. The New Zealand pro, who played just two seasons on the PGA Tour, but a dozen full seasons on the Korn Ferry Tour, turned 50 in 2021 and has been a beast on the senior tour. With four wins since turning 50 including three this year, Alker has been the dominant player on the PGA Tour Champions circuit this season. He would definitely be a surprise winner of the Charles Schwab Cup. The rest of the top 10 in the Schwab Cup standings are, in order, Harrington, Kelly, Miguel Angel Jimenz, Stricker, Bernhard Langer, Stephen Ames, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Thongchai Jaidee.
Bernhard Langer
The 64-year-old Langer has been the dominant player on the senior tour, winning 43 titles and finishing second another 40 times while winning the Schwab Cup six times. Even at 64, when he should be slowing down, he has won once on the PGA Tour Champions this year and has seven top-10 finishes. He is sixth in the Schwab Cup race at the moment, but he turns 65 in a month and might not be the favorite every time he tees up anymore. He might even start slowing down on his play in 2023. He is the only active player on the senior tour who played in the 1976 World Cup at Mission Hills.
No Phil Mickelson
After turning 50 in 2020, Mickelson played six PGA Tour Champions events and won four of them, providing the bump in interest the 50-and-over circuit had hoped four. But Mickelson hasn’t played a senior event since last November and is famously currently under suspension from the PGA Tour (and its affiliated tours) for signing with the LIV tour. It is possible, of course, that by the time the Galleri Classic is played something will change in the PGA Tour/LIV battle and that Mickelson could be eligible to play PGA Tour Champions events again. For now, that doesn’t really look promising.
The remaining schedule
With the five majors finished for the year, the senior tour has just 12 official events left in the 2022 season. That includes one tournament in California, the Pure Insurance Championship played in September at Pebble Beach, and the season ending Charles Schwab Cup at Phoenix Country Club in Arizona Nov. 10-13. The PGA Tour Champions does not play a wraparound season like the PGA Tour, though the PGA Tour will be getting rid of that scheduling pattern by 2024.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Golf: Desert fans should start getting to know the PGA Tour Champions now
