Couples Sounds Like Major General

Fred Couples, the player behind the proposed Major Champions Tour, says he’s not only willing to give up his PGA Tour card to play it, he’s also convinced the new tour is going to become a reality.

“I’m sure the thing is going to make it,” Couples said. “It’s going to be a big deal, and in five years, it’s going to be a huge deal.”

Couples is the architect of the planned tour for 2003 that would feature only players between 37 and 55 who have won major championships.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Couples said. “I’ve been behind it from the beginning.”

Couples says he has no interest in playing the senior tour when he turns 50 in 2009.

“I don’t want to play the senior tour,” he said. “I don’t want Tim Finchem to say, ‘commit to this,’ ‘play this,’ ‘do this’ because I’m one of the new guys on the block. I don’t want to have to play 20 tournaments to make the senior tour go.”

Couples, who will be 43 in October, has won 14 times in 22 years on the PGA Tour, including the 1992 Masters, but slowed by a bad back and a reluctance to play more often, he has won only twice since 1997. Last year, Couples played only 19 tournaments and had his worst season on the money list since 1986 at No. 131.

Couples hasn’t played more than 20 PGA Tour events in a year since 1992 and he says the prospects of continuing to struggle at his age prompted him to come up with the concept of the proposed tour.

“I don’t shoot the same scores as I used to, but I’m still competitive in my own range,” he said. “But I’m not in the [Accenture] Match Play, I’m not in the top 64, where am I going?

“If I have a putt to win a tournament, I want to play in the last group with a Greg Norman or a Nick Faldo or a Nicky Price. For me to win another tournament, that would be great for about a week, but it wouldn’t be anything to make my 20-year career or whatever any better.

“If I play like I did last year and keep deteriorating, and the PGA Tour is tough, there’s nowhere for me to play golf.”

Couples contends that the Major Champions Tour would bring out the best in an age group that is no longer interested in grinding it out, week to week, on the PGA Tour. The list of players who would be eligible to play in the tour includes Norman, Faldo, Price, Mark O’Meara, Paul Azinger, Steve Elkington, Bernhard Langer, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Tom Watson, Ian Woosnam, Curtis Strange and Mark Calcavecchia. There are 35 players who meet the age criterion in 2003.

Players would have to give up their PGA Tour cards to join the new tour, which would be viable only with a network television agreement and corporate sponsorship. Terry Jastrow, an independent television producer, is working to line up a television deal, perhaps with Fox, and to find sponsors.

So far, representatives of the PGA Tour have had little reaction to the proposed tour, except to say they would not want tournament dates to conflict, which is a certainty to occur. For instance, in the new tour’s model plan for a possible 2003 schedule, the first tentative date would be the second week of March opposite the Honda Classic, the second date would be the fourth week of March opposite Houston and the third date would be the fourth week of April opposite Greensboro.

In effect, not only would the PGA Tour’s events, albeit those of lesser stature, conflict with those on the new tour, but they would also go on without some players who would normally be in the field.

“Does it affect the PGA Tour? Sure it does,” Couples said. “But nothing against the PGA Tour, there’s just a right time for this thing to happen.”

Plans call for six to eight Major Champions Tour events, each with a purse of $2 million, played at courses that have hosted major championships, such as Merion, Winged Foot and Oakland Hills.

Couples says the period of time between when a player is no longer regularly competitive on the PGA Tour and when a player is eligible for the Senior PGA Tour at 50 are “wasted years.”

Last year, Couples did not have a top-10 finish in the 19 tournaments he entered and earned $385,984.

He remains exempt on the PGA Tour through 2006 as a result of his victory in the 1996 Players Championship.

“The last couple of years has been a struggle,” he said. “If I go to a regular tour event and I have a one o’clock tee time and the leaders are five, six, seven under and I’m at even par after three holes, that hole gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

“I don’t want to feel that way. And I’m not the only one who feels that way, either.”