"Who is running the Tour?" ***

That’s the question Tom Purtzer asks in a Sports Illustrated piece examining the Senior, err, Champions Tour cart fight.

Appearing in the new SI (subscription required to view link), writer Michael Arkush says that after “yet another forgettable season,” we are about to witness “Battle of the Carts II.”

With fields that Arkush says “create about as much buzz as Ralph Nader,” the Tour’s decision to ban carts on the Champions Tour will likely mean the disappearance of crowd pleasers like Chi Chi Rodriguez.

But it appears that the cart riders won’t go down without a fight.

Arkush writes, “According to longtime pro Kermit Zarley, Finchem suggested at a players' meeting in 2002 that consultants advised the Tour to get rid of carts as a way to improve its public appeal.

"He was saying that our image is that we're old people," says Zarley, 63. Yet last month, Zarley says, he was told by Gary Becka, the Tour's vice president of administration, that the Tour has never hired anyone to advise it on how to run the Champions tour.

"Who are these consultants?" asks Zarley, who recently filed a complaint with the Department of Justice arguing that because of a degenerative right hip he should be granted a cart under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

"That is the first question I want the commissioner to answer."

Purtzer also gets to the point that Ernie Els and other players are asking these days as the Tour leadership appears to be viewing the golfers as “product.”

"They've always told us that the players are supposed to be in control,” says Purtzer. “Whenever Tim [commissioner Finchem] or Deane [former commissioner Beman] would be in a meeting, they'd say, 'We work for you.' Well, they're not working for us."

***Update: Golf World's Bill Fields reports on Kermit Zarley’s letter and pens a column on the cart issue, writing, “If a battle of wills begets a war of attorneys, it is hard to see how the Champions Tour wins, regardless of how it might fare in a legal tussle. If carts are driven off, they're going to hit some speed bumps along the way.”

Fields provides this gem from Sen…Champions Tour head Rick George. "I was hired to elevate this tour, to look at everything critically. We looked at [changing] the minimum age. We looked at carts. How do we make this product better? How do we make it more saleable? How do we get more people watching?"

And as usual, the Tour’s motivation seems to revolve around this mysterious youth obsession that drives just about everything they do. Surely the elimination of carts will have the 18-to-34 year olds tuning in with greater frequency.