When is a Senior not a Senior? When he's 49 and still contending for Major championships, that's when.

Ireland's Des Smyth won the hearts of the armchair golf fans at last week's Open Championship at Muirfield when he led the field during that rain-lashed and wind-buffeted third round when Tiger Woods kissed the Calendar Slam goodbye.

But while the man from Mornington got what he described as 'the sympathy clap' coming up the 18th fairway on Sunday afternoon, he is still a ferocious competitor who is already striking fear into the hearts of the over fifties brigade on the European Seniors Tour.

As if the news that the likes of Smyth, Eamonn Darcy and Sam Torrance are about to descend on the honey pot next season wasn't bad enough, the Senior Tour's managing director Andy Stubbs has really put the cat amongst the pigeons with his plans to allow players of 48, or God forbid, even 45, to come on board.

Needless to say, his suggestion has been greeted with the kind of enthusiasm that turkeys usually reserve for the Yuletide season.

While the arrival of Celtic cousins Smyth and Darcy is part and parcel of the process of natural selection on the Seniors circuit, the thoughts of seeing Nick Faldo or Bernard Langer before 2008 is too much for some to bear.

Darcy, in fact, will be eligible for the end of season fare in Europe when he turns 50 on August 7 and he may opt to warm up for the US Seniors Tour qualifying school by playing in some of the juicier European events, such as the £225,000 Travis Perkins Senior Masters at Wentworth from August 16-18.

But with qualification for the US Seniors Tour proving more difficult than ever, the Irish boys may find themselves back on the Old Continent next season.

Only the top eight cards at the US qualifying school in November gain automatic entry into every event on the US Senior Tour.

This year there is a total of dollars US $ 60.5 million available to the players from 37 official events (another three million or so comes from five unofficial tournaments).

Compared to the £3.5 million available to the European Seniors Tour players, it is hardly surprising that many of them opt to try their hand in the States.

However, only the to 31 finishers on the US Seniors Tour money list qualify automatically for the following season.

Effectively that means that a player must win in excess of dollars US $650,000 to be sure of getting enough starts the following season to stay on tour.

With that kind of scenario to compete against, the current crop of European tour players are looking out for their future by trying to beef up the Seniors Tour before they find themselves struggling to make a living in their forties.

The tournament players meeting at the Murphy's Irish Open proposed taking a look at reducing the age limit form 50 to 48 and eventually to 45 in future years.

The idea is to attract more sponsors and tap the potential attraction of the likes of Nick Faldo (45), Sandy Lyle (44), Seve Ballesteros (45) and others before they move on the US Seniors circuit when they hit 50 in 2007 and 2008.

But for the moment they players are firmly against any proposed reduction in the age limit.

"I think it's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous," said Christy O'Connor Junior. "I don't think anybody is a senior until they are at least 50 or maybe even 50-odd. If anybody calls themselves a senior at 45 there is something seriously wrong.

"I think it's very bad for the tour and I don't think it's going to bring any more sponsors in. I think it's giving guys who are having a lean period between their 40th and 50th birthday an extra chance. But I certainly don't believe that you are a senior until you are 50 years of age.

"I don't know any walk of life where you are. It's like going backwards. When I was 44, I was in the Ryder Cup. I just don't understand where they are going. I think it's guys looking for an easy out and I don't think sponsors are going to come in for 45 year olds - 20 year olds maybe - but 45 year olds."

Senior Tour director Bernhard Gallacher was equally forceful on the issue during this week's British Senior Open at Royal County Down.

"Clearly you are not a senior at 45. Not when you consider that Eduardo Romero is winning the Scottish Open at 47, Scott Hoch is playing in the Ryder Cup at 46 and Des Smyth won a tournament at 48. There is actually a strong case for increasing the age to 55.

"If it would help the tour they will have to put their cards on the table as to what way it would help the tour. The only way it would help the tour would be to have more money for more tournaments."

"We would end up giving the money away to the guys you mentioned to play. The issue is that we should be the same as the rest of the world. Is it a Seniors tour or what? Maybe they should give it another name - like a mid tour."

Gallacher points out that Torrance, Des Smyth, Eamonn Darcy, Mark McNulty and Mark James are all set to turn 50 in the near future.

"They are all coming on next year so what's the hurry. Everyone is looking forward to Eamonn and Des and Sam and Manuel Pinero next year. The guys you are talking about - the Lyles and Faldos and Langers will definitely go to America so it won't make any difference anyway."

But Stubbs is determined to explore all the possibilities of increasing the revenue of a tour that has just 18 regular events this year as compared with 21 last season.

Said Stubbs: "I would like to see the 1985 Ryder Cup and Major champions we had in the 80s taking some of the ownership of the European Seniors Tour in the future by putting their name to an event. Say Sandy Lyle with Scotland, Nick Faldo with England, Bernhard Langer with Germany and Woosie with Wales or Jersey."

But Stubbs recognises that he will have his work cut out convincing the current Seniors of the logic of the idea.

"There has been talk that it is like the turkeys voting for Christmas," he said: "It's not meant to be that way. It's meant to be a sensible debate about how we can make the cake bigger.

At 67, Neil Coles is the father of the European Tour and one of the main movers behind the creation of the Senior edition in 1992.

"I'm totally against it. I was one of the main instigators of the original seniors tour. It has always been 50. Right the way back it has been 50. There's is a huge argument against lowering. The 45s have done well recently with Bernard Langer in the Ryder Cup at 45. But 50 is recognised worldwide as the age and if you changed it you would be right out of kilter with the rest of the world.

"The Americans wouldn't come and play with younger players, what would be the point? There is a promotional reason because of whole bunch of guys around 45. The problem is that they are not senior golfers."

The R and A considers 55 to be the lower age limit for senior players, having resisted the move to reduce the age from 60 until quite recently.

Marketing may well decide the outcome of this particular battle but as Tony Jacklin said this week: "Maybe 60 would be about right.

"We have all had to wait and I think it's interesting that there is a whole group of guys on the main tour in their early 40s that maybe can't hack it and are thinking that 50 is a hell of a long way off and let's bring it forward.

"It's a bit of a myth to think that Faldo is going to do eight or ten events on the senior tour, or Woosnam, or Sandy."

Judging by the reaction of the grey vote, this is an issue that looks set to run and run.

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© Brian Keogh 2002

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