The Champions Tour, a golf tour run by the PGA Tour, hosts a series of events annually in the United States and the United Kingdom for golfers 50 years of age and older. Many of the PGA Tour’s most successful golfers have gone on to play on the Champions Tour.

The Senior PGA Championship, founded in 1937, was for many years the only high-profile tournament for golfers over 50. The idea for a senior tour grew out of a highly successful event in 1978, the Legends of Golf, which featured competition between two-member teams of some of the greatest older golfers of that day. The tour was formally established in 1980 and was known as the Senior PGA TOUR until October 2002. The original logo was based on the PGA Tour logo, with the golfer’s profile modified to depict the wearing of a flat cap and plus fours.

In 2008 all the tournaments are in the United States except for the Senior British Open and a new tournament in the Dominican Republic. The guaranteed minimum official prize money is $55.2 million over 29 tournaments.

Most of the tournaments are played over three rounds (54 holes), which is one round less than regular professional stroke play tournaments on the PGA Tour. Because of this and having smaller fields, there are generally no “cuts” between any of the rounds. However, the five senior majors have a full 72 holes (four rounds). A golfer’s performances can be quite variable from one round to the next, and playing an extra round increases the likelihood that the senior majors will be won by leading players. In 2006, the Champions Tour Division Board of the PGA Tour organization voted to allow players the option to use golf carts during most events on the tour. The five major championships and certain other events, including pro-ams, are excluded.

Schedule

This Link will take you to the Champions Tour Schedule

Top Five Players

1. Jay Haas is an American professional golfer.

Haas was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Wake Forest University and was a member of the NCAA Championship team of the middle 1970s with Curtis Strange and Bob Byman that Golf World has called “the greatest college team of all time”. He won the individual championship in 1975. He turned professional in 1976.

Haas has had a solid career on the PGA Tour, winning nine times between 1978 and 1993. He had a resurgence in 2003, when he finished in the top 30 on the money list for the first time since 1995 and made the United States Presidents Cup team. The following year he was one of Hal Sutton’s two captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup, and made his third appearance in that event.

Haas was eligible to play in Champions Tour events from the start of the 2004 season and he lost to Hale Irwin by one stroke at the Senior PGA Championship in his first appearance at that level. He has still featured in the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings after his 50th birthday. In 2005, he won twice on the Champions Tour, while also continuing to play regularly on the PGA Tour. In April 2006, he won back to back events on the Champions Tour and the following month he won a playoff at the Oak Tree Golf Club with Brad Bryant at the Senior PGA Championship to claim his first senior major and he went on to top the 2006 Champions Tour money list. He was named the Champions Tour Player of the Year in 2006 as well.

2.  Bernhard Langer was born in Anhausen near Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. He turned professional in 1976 and has won many events in Europe and the United States, among them The Masters in 1985 and 1993. He was the inaugural World Number 1 when the Official World Golf Rankings were introduced in 1986, and he became a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001. He ranks second in career wins on the European Tour, with forty and has also played regularly on the U.S. based PGA Tour, especially in the late 1980s and since 2000. He has shown great durability, finishing in a tie for fifth at The Open Championship the month before his forty-eighth birthday and regaining a place in the top hundred of the rankings three months before his fiftieth birthday. He played on 10 Ryder Cup teams (1981, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2002) and was non-playing captain of the victorious European team in 2004.

3.  Scott Hoch is an American golfer, who represented his country in the Ryder Cup in 1997 and 2002.

Hoch was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He graduated from Wake Forest University in 1978, and was part of a winning Eisenhower Trophy team before turning pro in 1979.

He has won several prestigious tournaments, including the Western Open, the Ford Championship at Doral, the Heineken Dutch Open and the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. He also won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average in 1986. He has featured in the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings.

Hoch is widely known for missing a two foot long putt that would have won the 1989 Masters on the first playoff hole, after which he lost to Nick Faldo on the next hole. Hoch is also known for his famous quote regarding playing in the British Open at the “home of golf” at Saint Andrews. Hoch referred to this course, considered hallowed ground by most golfers around the world, as “the worst piece of mess” he had ever seen.

In May 2007, Hoch won his first Champions Tour event, the FedEx Kinko’s Classic. In February 2008, he won his second and third events in consecutive weeks.

4.  Loren Roberts is an American professional golfer. He was born in San Luis Obispo, California. He competed for San Luis Obispo Senior High School and Cal Poly. In 1975 he turned professional after his sophomore season due to the university dropping its NCAA Division II golf team.

He worked as an assistant pro at San Luis Obispo Golf and Country Club as well as Morro Bay Golf Course. He won the Foot-Joy PGA Assistant Professional Championship of 1979 and was second in 1980. The first professional tour where he competed was the PGA Tour of Australasia where he played briefly after his 1979 PGA victory.

5.  Jeff Sluman is an American professional golfer who has won numerous professional golf tournaments including six PGA Tour victories.

Sluman was born in Rochester, New York. He attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. He turned pro in 1980, and has had career earnings in excess of 18 million dollars.

Sluman has had an unusual career in terms of winning golf tournaments. During what are usually considered a golfers most productive years – their early twenties through their middle thirties – Sluman won only once. At the age of 30, he won the 1988 PGA Championship. Then, shortly before his 40th birthday, he starting winning consistently on the Tour and in non-Tour events. After winning the 1997 Tucson Chrysler Classic, he won seven more events including four on the PGA Tour during the next seven seasons. Sluman’s best season was in 2002 when he finished the year ranked 15th on the PGA Tour with $1,250,187 in earnings. Despite his rather unusual sequence in respect to tournament wins, Sluman has been one of the Tour’s most consistent top 10 finishers throughout his career.

The 1988 PGA Championship was played at the Oak Tree Golf Club in Edmond, Oklahoma. Sluman won the tournament by three strokes over Paul Azinger, shooting a total of 272. On the final day, Sluman took command of the tournament with a round of 65 that tied David Graham’s 1979 mark as the lowest winning round in PGA history.