Senior Classic: Exempt status still point of contention

Andy North is a two-time winner of the U.S. Open. But when he turns 50 next year, he will not be automatically exempt to play on the Senior PGA Tour because he did not earn enough money during his PGA Tour career.

Jim Thorpe and Howard Twitty were both three-time winners on the PGA Tour. Yet both had to endure the rigors of the Senior PGA Tour National Qualifying Tournament to play regularly on the over-50 tour this year.

If some members of the Senior Tour Division Board have their way, then North, Thorpe, Twitty and any player with at least three PGA Tour victories would earn automatic eligibility onto the Senior PGA Tour. The idea is to get more name players on a tour that is losing such legends as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

But the effort is being met with widespread resistance from many of the Senior PGA Tour players.

"I'm not in favor of giving exemptions to players when players who came before them had to earn their spots," Bobby Nichols said. "Every player out here on this tour has earned his spot. There's not a player who has been given a spot.

"If they're going to start doing that, then you can go down the list and make a case for a bunch of players. If you're going to do that, then why don't you give Johnny Bench a year's exemption? He has a pretty marketable name, doesn't he?"

Bob Murphy, a member of the Senior Tour Division Board, said the proposal is meant to help the Senior Tour as a whole, not the individual players who would receive the exemptions.

"The purpose," Murphy said, "was to be able to say to television and to the sponsors, 'Here's the list of guys who are coming next year. All these guys will be playing.' Right now, that's not the case.

"We would like for those guys to be eligible if it can help our sponsors. We're not doing it for those guys. We're doing it for the sponsors and for television. We're guaranteeing them name players."

That seems fair enough, except to the players who had to claw their way onto the tour through the nerve-wracking qualifying tournament. To them, changing the exemption process sounds like nothing more than offering certain players a handout.

"I didn't complain that I wasn't exempt," Thorpe said. "I went to Q school. I figured if I couldn't beat the guys in the Q school, I couldn't come out here and make money."

Murphy acknowledged that most of the players on the Senior Tour appear to be against the proposal, so it probably will be revamped.

But with an increasing number of players trying to squeeze into the 78-player field, the controversy surrounding the exemption process is unlikely to go away any time soon.

"No matter what they do, they're going to have to draw the line somewhere," Twitty said. "And someone's going to be on the right side of the line and someone's going to be on the wrong side."

Or as Thorpe said, "If they change it, somebody's not going to like it, and if they don't change it, somebody's not going to like it. I'm going to let somebody else make those decisions."

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