Regardless of what else the astounding Bernard Langer achieves in golf, he won’t forget what happened when he was 64, or to be more precise, 64 years, 1 month and 27 days old, a detail that figures to reside in the PGA Champions record book until evicted by Langer himself.
Unless it has been something done by Tiger or Phil—and they’ve done some notable things, to be sure, including winning unexpected majors in middle age—golf in the last few years has been centered around the young.
Much of the attention is on players in their teens or 20s who require little seasoning on their respective tours prior to succeeding. Collin Morikawa’s victory in The Open was his second major title. He is only 24, and part of the young American side that walloped Europe in the Ryder Cup last month. Yuka Saso was just shy of 20 when she won the U.S. Women’s Open, matching Inbee Park as that event’s youngest champion. Just recently, a 15-year-old high school golfer in North Carolina, Macy Pate, shot 57 in a conference championship. Not long after that state-record score made headlines, another young woman, Stanford freshman Rose Zhang, won her first three starts as a collegian.
There has been a fascination with precocious golf talent since Young Tom Morris, and it is understandable to embrace the current youth movement. Yet there always has been another kind of skill to appreciate as well, golfers who don’t beat the clock but cheat it by keeping the competitive window open longer than most.
For swing and deed Sam Snead has long been the poster senior for golf longevity, Tom Watson nearly bumping him off the wall 12 years ago at The Open, the claret jug his before a bogey on the 72nd hole at Turnberry. JoAnne Carner warmed hearts in the 2021 U.S. Senior Women’s Open, shooting 82-79 at age 82, a meaningful missed cut if there ever was one. Each spring at the Masters, Hall of Famer Gary Player, now 85, makes one swing that speaks volumes about fitness and taking care of yourself
With a victory Sunday at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, where he surpassed Scott Hoch as the oldest winner in PGA Tour Champions history, Langer reminded everyone of his preeminence among the game’s finest elders. Langer defeated Doug Barron on the first playoff hole at The Country Club of Virginia, in Richmond, for his 42nd career title on the senior circuit and is now just three victories shy of Hale Irwin’s mark, once seen as unassailable.
Irwin was a phenomenal senior, with seven majors among his record total, the last coming in the 2004 Senior PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club less than a week before his 59th birthday. Seven years later at the same course, he flirted with another Senior PGA title, tying for third as Watson beat David Eger in a playoff. In 2012, just shy of 67, Irwin again was third in the Senior PGA.
Thanks to an action and a mindset that endured, Irwin won his final Champions Tour event in early 2007, when he was 61. Langer now has won at least one tournament annually since joining the Champions Tour, an unprecedented 15 years. Although Langer still trails in all-time senior victories, the two-time Masters champion holds the record for the most senior majors with 11 titles, the most recent when he was 61. His victory in Virginia hardly came out of nowhere. Although Langer hadn’t won since the 2020 Cologuard Classic more than 19 months ago, he had 11 top-five finishes in that span. Langer will go into the second of three Charles Schwab Cup Playoff events with a large lead over Jim Furyk, a golfer 13 years his junior, with a sixth season-long crown on the horizon.
Senior golf can be viewed—and often is—as one of the sport’s side streets, separate and unequal to the main thoroughfare where legends are forged. But the aesthetic of the experienced is no small thing, even if the protagonist of the moment happens to use a broomstick on the greens. Langer’s total of Champions Tour victories now matches the number of times he won on the European Tour. That is, as a younger generation might put it, tour sauce of a special flavor.