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DEL.ICIO.USPGA shouldn’t tinker with schedule
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Gentlemen, rev up your engines. The PGA Tour is about to go NASCAR. I think, though I’m not quite sure in just what direction it’s heading, nor, one gathers from his press conference at East Lake Golf Club yesterday, neither is Commissioner Tim Finchem. “Just generally,” he said, “there will be a point system.”
And his State of the Tour commentary was peppered with such phrases as “we’re not in position to announce details,” and “that’s something we’ll be discussing,” and “we’re not through with that process yet.”
That is not to be interpreted as indecision, but that there are decisions to be made, and not dealt with frivolously.
What the commissioner is concerned about is that the PGA Tour does not have its grand climax. No World Series, no Super Bowl, no Final Four event to get the world all balled up in a big dither. That was the idea behind the Tour Championship, but truth to tell, it has become more anti-climax than climax. After years of meandering, it couldn’t have settled in a more suitable home. East Lake. Bobby Jones. Donald Ross course with a Rees Jones touch-up. And behind it, a surge of regional enthusiasm spearheaded by the vigorous Tom Cousins, backed up by Coca-Cola and the Southern Co. But it hasn’t taken off in full flight, as Finchem and golf in general had anticipated. It ran head-on into the football season, and football gobbles up television time and audiences. The purse is nice, $6.5-million for a field of 30, but not enough to attract even the full 30 this year. Phil Mickelson decided not to come here, where in 2000, he set what is still the 72-hole record for the event. Finchem was disappointed. So was Mickelson’s press chief, T.R. Reinman, who simply said, “He said he just didn’t feel like playing any more golf right now.”
This year, the NASCAR world decided to put in a sort of second season, with points to be contested. The jury is still out on that. But that’s what Finchem has in mind for the tour, a tour within the tour. If the commissioner himself wasn’t in position to explain it yet, I’m surely not able to. But what it seems to boil down to is that a series of tournaments leading up to the Tour Championship will cap off the season in September. But not so fast there. The season still wouldn’t be over yet. There would be some tournaments following, and in essence, they would be playing the end of one season and the beginning of the next at the same time. If you’re expecting more, I’m sorry. That’s about as far as I can go, but basically, Finchem is grasping for something to keep the tour from falling off the board in the fall.
Tournament golf has taken a lot of remodeling in recent years. I’m not positive that this series of World Championship events has all the continents in a tizzy of enthusiasm. It isn’t easy to get the American side zeroed in on tournaments played at Valderrama, Victoria Clube de Golf, Mount Juliet Conrad, and such venues that read like mystery titles. The World Cup, for instance, has lost its identity.
What amounts to a successful tournament in the USA is one with Tiger Woods in the field. A student of the game suggested the other day, “Why don’t they just have a Tiger Tour, just those tournaments in which he plays?” Just a few feet from me a group of people, presumably in town for the Tour Championship, are gabbing away. You know what they’re talking about? Football. Don’t they realize this is golf season?
It has been my impression that the PGA Tour already had the best point system in the world — earnings. That pretty much covers everything, it seems. You finish in the top 125, you’re in business for next year. But it’s the fall depression that has the commissioner bothered, realizing, I’m sure, that he is dealing in a world of self-oriented contractors. So Independent Contractor Mickelson stays home.
So this is it, as Finchem sees it: “It needs to be a system that encourages players to play more.”
If money isn’t enough, God knows what is.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf, Other
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By doc
November 3, 2005 08:49 AM | Link to this
as you state there may only be one way to make them stay out longer especially, if they dont value the game’s big picture the way tiger does. it is a simple solution bring down the purses! supply and demand (tv) will probably do just that and that is what fincham is fighting.
By jim rockwell
November 3, 2005 10:18 AM | Link to this
I told a buddy last week these guys were making too much when Phil dropped out. Can you imagine Sam Snead punting an event like this?
By Sean
November 3, 2005 01:25 PM | Link to this
I’d like to see the Commissioner add an incentive/disincentive to have the players have to play a significant amount of all the PGA tounaments over say, a 3 year period. Tiger plays the same schedule every year. It would create some buzz for the Tucson’s, the Booz Allen’s, the BC Opens.
By dan
November 3, 2005 03:23 PM | Link to this
Like it or not, golf can get old to watch. After all, the events stretching from Hawaii in Winter to the tournament at East Lake this week span about 9 months. Taking a break is natural and adding more “significant” events will just make it seem longer. Too many sports have too few teams in small divisons and horrendously long playoff periods. To add golf to the mix may actually diminish it and become a non-event that few, other than avid golf fans, watch. When a player makes millions each year and much more in endorsements, the money factor becomes less entertaining. I like a break so I can enjoy watching it again each spring. To add more golf events will be similar to adding old movies or reruns for filler material on TV. After a while, boredom sets in.