Golf: Champions Tour much more than a dream 25 years later

Without effusive hyperbole or bragging, Don January thinks the growth and acceptance of the Champions Tour is the greatest story of the last half century in professional sports.

Having said that, January isn't inclined to take much credit for himself or for the handful of other men who together helped make golf for players 50 and older a viable enterprise for competitors, sponsors and fans of the game.

"It's been a tremendous thing, senior golf," says January, 74, who won the inaugural Champions Tour event, the Atlantic City Senior International, on June 22, 1980, at Atlantic City Country Club in Northfield, N.J. "Playing for this much money and to have this many tournaments -- who could have dreamed that it would be where it is today? I don't think anyone could have seen this. Nobody is that smart."