Don Markus is already branding The Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship's free ticket concept dead on arrival after day one, but considering that the PGA event looked just as poorly attended and you have empty seats at MLB playoff games, it'd be a shame to write the idea off just yet.
For the most part, cheering fans were replaced by chirping birds. Those looking to soak up the atmosphere of a big-time tournament found themselves happy to soak up the sun. For a tournament sponsored by the country's largest supplier of electricity, there was none.
Watson and others say that it might not be fair to judge until the weekend how effective a marketing strategy it is to allow fans in for free. Given the competition this tournament could have Sunday from the Redskins, as it did from the Ravens in previous years, free admission might not be enough.
"This time of year people are not thinking about golf. They're thinking about golf in April when the Masters comes around," Watson said. "They're shutting it down now. I always shut it down after the first of September … You can't have the ideal date for every tournament."
Said Mark O'Meara, "It's not like we draw huge crowds because there's so much golf being played. So any way we can make the game a little more accessible to everyone, we'd like to do it."
Steve Schoenfeld, the tournament's executive director, said that the concept of having local companies sponsor a particular round rather than charge admission has worked well at other Champions Tour events in the past, and figured that doing it for the Champions Tour's first look at the redone former PGA Tour stop made sense.