PGA Tour Champions is still competitive golf, just at a different level

If you are a football fan, do you only watch the National Football League? Some people do focus strictly on the NFL, because they believe, rightfully, that the NFL is the highest level of the game. Why watch football that is not the best in the world?

Then again, there are football fans who watch the NFL, but also watch college football. Or they watch the XFL's spring league. Or they drive down to their local high school to watch Friday night games in their own community. For those fans, football is football, no matter the level of play.

Some fans watch basketball, whether it is the NBA, the WNBA, the Olympics or middle school recreational games. Same is true for baseball or pretty much any sport you can name.

Which brings us to the PGA Tour Champions. There is a large group of golf fans who never give the senior tour a second thought. The best players in the world don't play on the PGA Tour Champions, so why should they be bothered watching the 50-and-over circuit, they say.

Okay, if the charge against the PGA Tour Champions is that it isn't the best golf in the world, the 50-and-over circuit is guilty. But for a golf fan who enjoys watching golf at a high level, the PGA Tour Champions is more than worthy of interest.

Consider just three things from the PGA Tour Champions since the start of 2023:

• At the season-opening event in January, the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Hawaii, Steve Stricker shot an opening-round 12-under 60 in the trade winds on the way to victory. A 60 is good golf no matter the level of the tour.

• Bernhard Langer, a seemingly ageless wonder, won the Chubb Classic in Naples, Fla., in February. It was the 65-year-old Langer's 45th career PGA Tour Champions victory, tying him for the most wins on the tour ever with another legend, Hale Irwin. Again, 45 wins on any level deserves to be acknowledged.

• Just two weeks ago at The Players Championship, featuring a packed field of the elite players on the regular PGA Tour, 56-year-old Jerry Kelly set a record as the oldest golfer to ever make the cut at the event. Considering some of the high-powered names that didn't make the cut, making the weekend and tying for 54th is a stellar performance.

What it is and isn't

So that's the kind of golf the PGA Tour Champions can produce. What the tour isn't is the most elite players in the game playing 7,400-yard courses and shooting 63 and winning a couple of million dollars a week. Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy won't be playing this week.

And in a real sense the Galleri Classic isn't the LPGA major championship that was played at Mission Hills Country Club for 51 years. That tournament, last known as the Chevron Championship before moving to Houston for next month's event, featured the best players in the world in women's golf and tough major championship conditions for four days of play.

Players in the Galleri Classic will still face difficult and firm greens on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course this week, but there certainly won't be any rough approaching four inches like a major championship demands.

What the senior tour offers is a very good brand of golf played by golfers who have won major championships and PGA Tour and DP World Tour titles, guys who know how to win because they have done it before. It is played on championship caliber courses, and it is played by golfers who are happy to still have a chance to practice their trade into the 50s and 60s.

Those who insist on watching golf only on the PGA Tour, the highest level of the game, probably aren't going to be swayed off their argument by what happens at the Galleri Classic this week. And that's a shame because those fans won't necessarily know what they are missing.

Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Support local journalism. Subscribe to The Desert Sun.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Galleri Classic: PGA Tour Champions shows fans competitive golf at a different level