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Friday, September 12, 2008
Tour Championship an anticlimactic end
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It so happens that I have just finished reading five pages of the Official PGA Tour Guide titled “FedEx Cup,” in which the most significant information is in the smallest type: “Subject to Change.” Change there has been, but sadly, not in time to bring relief to the Tour Championship. This is supposed to be the crowning glory of the season, the “Super Bowl of the Tour,” in which the official champion is enriched by $10 million and sent away to an offseason of utter luxury.
With all the tinkering the Tour has put into making its FedEx venture foolproof, the Tour Championship comes up as a somewhat hollow climax. As you are surely aware, the championship has already been played out. All Vijay Singh has to do is tee it up, play the tournament at East Lake, even finish last, and he is the champion. This is brutally unfair to East Lake, and to Coca-Cola, who is what the tour labels the “presenter.” Which is why East Lake is the host and is in line for condolences.
Oh, yes, Singh says he is not coming to East Lake simply to pick up his check, “I’m going to try to win the Tour Championship,” he said in a teleconference. “I love Atlanta and East Lake. I’d rather be in this position than knowing I’d have to win the Championship to take the FedEx Cup.” They don’t raise any dummoxes in Fiji.
Singh won two of the tournaments known as playoffs, and tied for 44th in the third. Even if he finishes last at East Lake, he would have 124,651 points, and Camilo Villegas, who won the BMW Championship, would have only 123,050 should he win. Singh has won the Tour Championship before, in 2002, and lost another in a playoff to Hal Sutton in 1998, both at East Lake.
It’s possible to win the Tour Championship tournament, and take home $1,260,000, but not be the Tour champion. Stewart Cink says he’ll be playing hard, and so will the other 29 players, including Vijay, but no matter how hard they play, what they win is only one more tournament. The deed is already done, and this all brings to a head the pressing question of why the FedEx Cup in the first place? Which, it might be added, prompted Commissioner Tim Finchem to say, in the teleconference, that this unforeseen circumstance “kicked off another round of what do we do next?”
I got a suggestion: Tank it.
Isn’t the PGA Tour strong enough to carry its own load? This would never have happened, you might suggest, had Tiger Woods not decided to go in for surgery at this inopportune time. That brings up the question: Is the life of the PGA Tour dependent on one person? And if it is, there’s something out of kilter at Ponte Vedra. And look what else weighs heavily on East Lake: That the probable Player of the Year didn’t make the field, Paddy Harrington, winner of the British Open and PGA Championship. Something has to be seriously warped when that happens. Which brings up a thought that has puzzled me since Finchem first introduced his spinoff of the NASCAR marketing tool: Was he registering his fear of the rivalry of college football, the opening of the NFL season and the peak of major league baseball pennant races?
If this be the case, then the PGA Tour is staring in the face of a serious challenge. Tiger won’t be here forever. Arnold Palmers and Jack Nicklauses don’t keep popping up ever 25 years or so, and it is apparent that overseas stars don’t light up the American gallery. That in mind, I would have to say that the PGA Tour has come to a crossroads in its search for the magic touch. Indeed, what do they do next?
“Subject to change” — the type is small but the problem is major.
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