Columnist Dean Juipe: Amateurs burden golf tournament

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4084.

It's a wonder either of the two professional golf tour events that Las Vegas annually hosts attract any decent players at all.

Sure, the money's good, like the $1.4 million that is up for grabs in this week's Las Vegas Senior Classic. The winner gets $210,000.

And it is, of course, a chance for the tour regulars to stop in the real City That Never Sleeps. Las Vegas does have a magnetism to it.

But the players could vacation here if they were so inclined and the money, while mind-boggling to those of us in the working class, isn't what it used to be for players who are bathing in big bucks. Even the Senior Tour, which is way behind the PGA Tour in terms of dollar growth, has seen its collective prize money escalate from $14 million just 10 years ago to $49 million in 1999.

It's up $4 million just from last year.

Those who run the tournaments in Las Vegas can successfully argue the city does everything in its peripheral power to assure the players a good time while they're here. Not only are there the usual luxury cars for the players' use, there are complimentary tickets galore for shows and access to whatever entertainment stars happen to be in town.

Those are nice extras.

But the on-the-course situation for the players while they're here is abysmal and it's as bad or worse for the spectators. Thursday at the TPC at The Canyons, it appeared worse than ever.

While the tournament itself can't control the weather, the wind was blowing relentlessly in the Summerlin area and it was far stronger there than it was near the Strip. This is relevant only in that the tournament used to be held at the compact, wind-resistant Desert Inn Golf Club.

The two Summerlin courses in use this week are wonderful layouts, but they're not the least bit fan-friendly. There's no cutting across holes to see a wide variety of players, as the courses follow a winding, strenuous, one-way, up-and-down path through a series of ravines and crevices.

Those points aside, the pace of play was horrendous and almost unforgivable from a professional golf tour's point of view. Because each pro was saddled with three amateurs, and because those amateurs will hit more than an occasional ball in those ravines, there's a lot of wasted time.

Pace of play at The Canyons was an ungodly 5:20. That's unacceptable.

Not that there was anyone there who was watching. Put it this way: Caddies likely outnumbered fans by about 10 to 1.

The real top-of-the-line players skip the Las Vegas tour stops whenever they can and it's because of the amateurs. The catch is that the city sponsors the tournaments to promote itself and it uses the amateurs' entry fees to supplement the prize fund. But with the amateurs as active participants and the Senior Tour players obligated to play four rounds in Las Vegas -- instead of their usual three -- and the PGA Tour players obligated to play five rounds -- instead of their usual four -- it's easy to see why the superstars would rather take the week off.

Apparently the current format is set in stone, so there's no point wishing for the corporate sponsorship that would make the need for the amateurs and their entry fees obsolete.

That's too bad, because professional golf is a lot of fun. But what we have here, with amateurs blighting the landscape, isn't much fun at all.

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