How Long Is a Lifetime?

Resisting the P.G.A.'s effort to oust the old pros

Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, Julius Boros, Jack Burke Jr., Doug Ford. Their names are engraved on the winners' trophies of nearly 200 major golf tournaments. Together they have won four U.S. Open tournaments, nine P.G.A. Championships, six Masters and two British Open titles. They are enshrined in the Professional Golfers Association's Hall of Fame. Last week they added their names to a list of plaintiffs suing the P.G.A. Tour in state district court in Houston.

What they are mad about is a decision by the P.G.A.'s tournament policy board to narrow the lifetime unlimited exemption that traditionally spared all pre-1970 winners of the U.S. Open and P.G.A. Championship from having to qualify to enter tournaments.* Under the new rule announced last November and scheduled to take effect in 1979, that privilege is not automatic. Regardless of past glories, the old pros must earn an annual minimum (an average of $667 for each of the first 15 tournaments entered) or else be forced into the field of "rabbits" who spend the first day of each week scrambling to make the 156-man draw in qualifying rounds. Says Plaintiff Lionel Hebert (1957 P.G.A. champion): "I resent anyone in this era telling me that what I won, they're going to take away. They're going to have a hell of a fight doing it."

Hebert was one of the targets of the rule change. He entered 20 tournaments last year, but played so poorly that he never finished higher than 47th place, and his total money earnings were just $828. Yet each time he competed, a spot in the draw had to be denied to one of the rabbits. P.G.A. Tour Commissioner Deane Beman explains: "An exemption that was unlimited in duration and had no relationship to current abilities was unreasonable. It denied the opportunity for someone else to be able to compete."

In 1970 the P.G.A. first changed the rules to open the ranks to younger players. Without limiting the exemption for past winners, it then decreed that future winners would be exempt only for ten years. But with 400 players competing for $10 million in prizes, some younger competitors were still dissatisfied.

Randy Erskine, 29, a fifth-year pro who must play in the rabbit rounds to gain a position in the opening-round field, concedes that exempt players kept him out of only two tournaments last year. But Erskine adds: "Without the lifetime exemptions, they could never play in a tournament. They're playing a major league sport, but they're playing like minor leaguers. Their scores show it."

Agrees third-year Pro Joe Kunes:

"The change wasn't meant to demean exempt players. They will get to play as long as they meet minimum standards. Granted they proved themselves in the past, but this is just like any other sport. If you go a year and don't make your minimum, something is wrong with your game."

But in an attempt to weed out the few hangers-on, the rule change penalizes many still competent golfers. And in the future, it could deny fans the thrill of watching Snead's flawless swing or Boros' stylish shotmaking. Gone too would be the joy simply of seeing a Gene Sarazen stride across a golf course.

Many top players are as strongly opposed to the rule change as are the oldtimers. Tom Watson, last year's Masters champion and No. 1 money winner, asserts: "There are certain players who cannot compete with the younger players, but I can't see rescinding the whole lifetime exemption because of those two or three guys. These people helped make the tour. There's no way you can take away their exemption after the fact. They won it, plain and simple, and it's theirs."

* The unlimited exemption is just one of 18 qualifying exemptions, including berths for players invited by tournament sponsors.

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