This extraordinarily successful and engaging golf tournament going on to the north at Cheval golf course presented to us by the Outback Steakhouse friends of ours and of golf is benefiting, as are we, from a decision to move it back a few weeks to these glorious days of mid April. It may yet rain, or fog up, or but it is not likely to rain it to a shutdown.

This wonderfully-created event that calls for participation by professional and amateur players doesn’t bother the pros and it delights those who believe they can play well enough to be in the competition, or, hope they can. The tournament really counts, when the pros play against each other individually and as teammates of the trying-so-hard amateurs, and, for the amateurs quickly out of contention, a good walk in the Florida sunshine. 

It will get to basics by Sunday, for there is big money to be won by those who can accept it - $1.2 million — which will buy you a lot of those bloomin’ onions Outback co-founder Tim Gannon developed.

No, Gannon isn’t in this tournament. Doesn’t play golf. Plays polo and captains his yacht. But, the other two founding fathers, Chris Sullivan and Bob Basham, play golf — Sullivan well and Basham courageously. It was Basham who said the moving back of the date was the right thing to do. We checked it, and the weather was lousy at the date it would have been played on the original scheduling.

Sullivan surely would have noted the roll the Outbackers are on. The weather was dandy for their bowl game at Raymond James on New Year’s Day. The Outback folks took over the Pro-Am as a title sponsor for the 1988 tournament, have made it grow in every way to the present circumstance of top quality, great and knowledgeable crowds, and a lot of hot dog and Bud sales. It was never a guarantee things would turn out this year. Never.

The seniors separated and began play for the over-50 crowd in 1980 with four tournaments, none in Tampa. Don January and Arnold Palmer were the over-50 studs of the day. They, and others like Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Sam Snead got involved. So did the Egypt Temple Shrine, so did new Carrollwood Village Golf Club and so did Art Pepin, the bubbly Budweiser-Michelob Beer Distributor in Tampa.

They got a leadoff date for the growing Senior Tour for Carrollwood. Pep and the Shriners sponsored it. The town got behind the $125,000 Tournament. Pep had all the pros at his Temple Terrace riverside home he and Polly had built, for a barbecue, and I remember I was the emcee at a dinner at the Shrine. All the pros came. I remember Snead spoke, and Pep, and a Shriner with a fez.

Palmer’s presence made that first advance a success, and the last day of play made headlines. He had a big lead going to the back nine. I mean a big lead, so big, Art Pepin (above) wrote the winner’s check to him, pasted it on a board, sent a plane flying to drop it on the 18th green when he won. A plane went up with the check. Palmer hit a wall. He dropped hole after hole and blew his lead, ending in a tie with Don January. Of course January won the sudden death playoff.

Pepin handed January a new check.

So the Seniors renewing this week here had that unforgettable start. It was played one more year at Carrollwood with Artie and the Shriners the main guys, went away for a while before Bob Cromwell and his boss, George Gage, got their company, GTE, to sponsor it at the Tampa Palms as the GTE Sunclassic, then at Cheval until the Outback took over.

It truly has been a wonder, a successful production in which so many have been involved, at the top, and down through about 1,000 volunteers who buy their own uniforms. I mean there have been the Pepins (Art, Polly, Tom and J.P.), Barb Jensen, who retired to her own golf game after directing matters so long, and Denny Antram, out of the loop too. Bigshot chairmen who worked hard too have included Jim Walter, Hugh Culverhouse, Joe Casper, Alan Reeves, Jeff Smith, current president of Outback, and Jackie Suarez, the president this year. Hard to miss with a lineup such as that.

Well, they did not with this spectacular classic event that so rounds out our varied, prideful sports calendar. Surely, some may now say I tooted our own horn too loudly and cornily.

Why not?

Babaloo.