2009 Champions Tour Schedule: More Contraction

Make it two tours whose 2009 schedules are affected, negatively, by the global economic downturn. As mentioned previously, the LPGA Tour is contracting from 34 events on its 2008 schedule to 31 on its 2009 schedule.

And the Champions Tour is also cutting back, losing three events. The senior circuit's 2009 schedule shows 26 tournaments, down from 29 in 2008. The dropped tournaments are the Turtle Bay Championship in Hawaii, the Bank of America Championship in Massachussetts and the Commerce Bank Championship in New York. (Why is not surprising that two of the three dropped events were sponsored by banks? Guess they didn't get that bailout money in time.)

With 26 tournaments overall and five majors, nearly 20-percent of the tour's events are majors. A further peculiarity - but not an unusual one for the Champions Tour - is a stretch of back-to-back-to-back majors. The Senior British Open and U.S. Senior Open will be played in consecutive weeks, followed by an off week and then another major, the Jeld-Wen Tradition.

View the 2009 Champions Tour schedule.