Spectators line the hill overlooking hole No. 8 at Whistling Straits. The Champions Tour is popular with fans because the players still can bring it.

Haven, Wis. ? New sports leagues generally don’t last long. The novelty wears off for easily distracted sports fans and for the owners hemorrhaging money. Maybe somebody writes an entertaining book looking back on them. Maybe they just fade away.

And then there is the seniors golf tour, now called the Champions Tour, born in 1980 and still going strong.

It stands on the opposite end of the spectrum of Old Timers baseball games. Formerly great ballplayers might enjoy playing in them, but it’s downright painful to watch old men waddle around the bases in too-tight double-knit jerseys. (Unsolicited fashion tip: Fat guys should never wear pinstripes). The geezers don’t swing a bat anywhere close to how they once did. You can almost hear their shoulders scream when they try to throw the baseball. If it weren’t so boring as to eliminate the possibility of any strong emotion, it would be sad.

Golfers age so much better than baseball players. They might not feel the same, and many of their bellies expand, but to the average weekend hack’s eye, the seniors still look like pretty much the same when the square club face drives through the ball, which power-hooks into its resting place way down the fairway.

More than 15,000 spectators walked Whistling Straits on a hot, windy Saturday afternoon, and they were living in the moment, taking in the senior major, not yearning for the good old days.

For Tom Watson, the thrill isn’t gone. For the huge galleries that have walked with him for three days watching this great athlete from Stilwell compete was nearly as thrilling as in his younger days. Watson, in search of his first U.S. Senior Open title after finishing second three times in the past five years, takes a three-stroke lead over Loren Roberts heading into today’s final round.

Watson is 57 and still relevant, still a star in his sport. Not for what he did, but for what he’s doing. Golfers are the luckiest of all professional athletes in that they don’t fall off that cliff from competing at the highest level one year, then not at all the next year and for the rest of their lives. It leaves such a void. Golfers hit 50 and they still get to compete. Not only that, they get to win again.

What is it about the game of golf that allows athletes to play it so well for so long?

“They don’t tackle you in golf,” Watson said. “You don’t run up and down the court a million miles like you do in basketball and ruin your knees. You ruin other things. My hip’s bad. But as long as you keep your flexibility, keep your back in good shape, you can still play. Now, can you play against the kids? No. The kids have that extra length. We’re probably a little smarter than the kids. We can play the courses a little better, but as far as hitting the ball where you have to at places like Oakmont and in the Masters, we can’t do it with the kids.”

But they can still do it and do it well enough to feed their need for competition and remain relevant to a national sports audience that has more options than ever.

The Champions Tour’s popularity has a chance to explode in the year 2026, when Tiger Woods becomes eligible. With any luck, his ego will allow him to take a step down then for a second round of domination.