Finchem is caught in a squeeze
In one of the stranger press releases over the weekend it was announced that the PGA Tour Policy Board will probably reject the “Designated Event” plan for 2011. This was Tim Finchem’s solution to get some of the world’s top players into the weaker field events.
Davis Love, a Policy Board member, indicated the new rule had been passed in July but that something of this magnitude actually has to be passed twice and that ratification at the upcoming meeting likely won’t happen. Instead, players will be asked to “help” certain events on a voluntary basis.
As if that’s going to happen. Don’t count on seeing Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els at the RBC Canadian Open anytime soon.
Love explained that designating an event castes it in an unfavourable light. He used the McGladrey Classic, of which he is the host, as an example.
“We wouldn’t want to be designated,” Love said. “ ‘Tiger played XYZ, but they made him’ ’’ Love said. “That’s going to look bad, even though that’ll sell tickets.”
That’s Love’s opinion but it’s more likely there are a few tournament directors who would gladly accept the stigma if they could get Woods to show up. Tournaments that have been struggling for years because of a bad date on the schedule aren’t concerned about vanity – they’re looking at survival and this move by the PGA Tour is just another slap in the face.
If you’re wondering why the Policy Board would reject a plan that could stabilize a number of events, you don’t have to look much farther than the World Rankings. As long as Woods, Mickelson, Stricker, Furyk and a handful of other American players dominated the top end of the World Rankings, Finchem and company probably felt pretty comfortable mandating that the players help the Tour by playing a certain number of designated events each year.
Now, however, Americans only hold eight of the Top 20 spots and the international players are not as beholden to the PGA Tour. In fact, Lee Westwood (#1) and Rory McIlroy (#10) have already indicated they will not take up PGA Tour membership in 2011, opting to focus on the European Tour and the majors.
More recently, Ian Poulter (#14), who has been a PGA Tour member since 2005, has pondered publicly that he too may move back home now that the European Tour has increased the mandatory number of events from 12 to 13. He wants to play both Tours but it is increasingly difficult given the mandatory requirements. (The PGA Tour requires its members to play in a minimum of 15 events to retain membership).
For people with real jobs, playing golf 18-20 weeks a year doesn’t seem like much of a hardship but the tournament schedule is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to time management. Apart from travel, there are sponsor issues, home country considerations and of course, family obligations that have to be factored into a touring professional’s planning.
A few years back, Ernie Els tried to play both the PGA Tour and the European Tour, maintaining a house in Florida, another in London and one in his native South Africa. Even with a private jet , Els acknowledged that the travel nearly killed him and it took too heavy a toll on his family.
Another consideration for European players is the Ryder Cup. It would be foolish to suggest that Americans don’t take the Ryder Cup seriously, but they’re not as passionate as their opponents. A change in selection criteria for the Euro team is likely before the 2012 confrontation but for most players the best way to get on the team is by supporting the European Tour.
With more of the world’s top players opting not to play full time in America, the last thing the PGA Tour can do is place more mandatory requirements on its members. Perhaps it should look to reduce the minimum number of required events so that we don’t have a repeat of the Seve issue. Old timers will recall that Ballesteros refused to comply with the PGA Tour’s membership requirements and North American fans were deprived of the Spaniard’s presence for all but the majors each year.
Commissioner Finchem is caught in a squeeze. Publicly he needs to offer all the support he can to the weaker field tournaments but his independent contractor players aren’t quite so beholden to him anymore. More restrictions will further alienate those with options on both sides of the pond.
Westwood and McIlroy have already decided to stay in Europe. It will be unfortunate if Martin Kaymer, Paul Casey, Ian Poulter and others do the same. A golf season without many of the world’s top ranked players won’t make life any easier for the suits in Ponte Vedra.
Some thoughts on the Ryder Cup
As the singles matches wound down to six left, then five and finally that nail-biter between Graeme McDowell and Hunter Mahan, I found that I couldn’t stay in my chair, often had to walk out of the room and even began clutching a lob wedge so tightly that it must have been close to snapping.
I have nothing invested in the Ryder Cup, either professionally or personally, other than a rooting interest. Yet the matches were so compelling you’d think my life depended on them. Players will always tell you it’s harder to watch than compete and in this case they were bang on.
Is there a more exciting golf event than the Ryder Cup? The format is brilliant and the timing even more so. While you’d love to have this kind of entertainment every week, the fact that there is a two year build up makes it all the more special. Even the President’s Cup can’t come close to matching the fervour associated with the Ryder Cup.
My only wish is that before 2012, when the Ryder Cup matches return to Medinah, I can find a satellite feed that lets me listen to European announcers instead of the NBC homers. It’s one thing to cheer for the home side but when all perspective is tossed out the window, it’s pretty hard to stomach.
A typical example is a situation where both European and American players are faced with a four foot putt. For some reason the European’s putt is a tricky downhill slider that he’ll be lucky to make with his nerves jangling as they are while the American’s putt is an easy tap in.
The Twenty Ten course was perfect for the Ryder Cup. As expected it gave up lots of birdies but had a enough holes that could bite you at exactly the wrong moment. Perhaps the best match play hole yet is the short par-4 15th: a driveable hole with no bail out. The Euros totally dominated this hole which turned out to be a crucial factor in their win.
Did Colin Montgomerie out Captain Corey Pavin? I’d say he was better prepared and his line-up for the singles seems inspired. Leaving a strong player like McDowell to the end to get the final point looks brilliant in retrospect.
Both Captains played a pretty low key role once play got under way. They let the players play and kept the coaching and inspirational speeches to a minimum.
To win a Ryder Cup, everyone has to be going full bore. Your best players have to be the best players. For the Americans that was not the case. Mickelson never seemd to get on track, Furyk flinched at a key moment and Mahan coughed up a hair ball when it mattered most. On the other hand, Rickie Fowler looks like the reincarnation of Lanny Wadkins and a potential superstar and so does Boom Baby! Jeff Overton.
For the Europeans, several players came up big. Luke Donald is a Ryder Cup machine which makes you wonder why he can’t win more on the PGA Tour. Nobody seems to want it more than Ian Poulter (except Sergio Garcia who seemed to be everywhere as a vice captain). 43-year old Miguel Angel Jiminez is like the Energizer bunny while Graeme McDowell may be the coolest player on the planet. A Ryder Cup and a US Open in the same year? Nerves of steel.
Captain’s pick Padraig Harrington often looked like he didn’t know where he was but the other picks performed brilliantly. If the Europeans ever make a change to their selection process so that even more world players can make the team, look out. Not that they needed them in 2010 but it’s got to be tough to leave players like Paul Casey and Justin Rose off the team.
One final thought: US Captain Corey Pavin was criticized for being too laid back, too low key, not inspirational enough for his team. Wait until they see Davis Love in 2012. The man barely registers a pulse.
Tough choice for Monty
This past weekend delivered a boatload of intriguing golf stories beyond the usual tournament reports. Herewith, in no particular order, some Monday morning blather.
Tough choice for Monty. With three wildcard picks to complete the European Ryder Cup team, Captain Colin chooses another Molinari, Paddy Harrington and Luke Donald. That means he has to leave Paul Casey and Justin Rose off the team. Casey is ranked #9 in the world, one spot ahead of Donald while Rose is ranked #22 and has two wins on the PGA Tour this year. That’s two more than either Harrington or Donald. The toughest bit for the Scottish Captain may have been trying to choose amongst three Englishmen and an Irishman.
Some people still haven’t figured out that the LPGA Tour is not an American product anymore. Apart from the huge contingent of non-American players, twelve of the twenty-six events are played outside the US. So there’s no valid explanation for the idiotic comment from one late night pundit who suggested that Michelle Wie “still hasn’t proven anything since her two wins on the LPGA Tour were in Mexico and Canada. She still hasn’t won on US soil.” One suspects he’ll be eating those words pretty soon.
While we’re on the topic of word eating, perhaps the CBC should re-think their choice of Ron McLean as host of the CN Canadian Women’s Open telecast. McLean is clearly not a golfer. Otherwise, how to explain “the 17th and 18th holes are the 18th and 19th hardest on the course.” He certainly has a gift (curse) for inane chatter as evidenced by all the throwaway lines like the one he made after a great bunker shot by Michelle Wie. “How can you grow up in Hawaii and not be good in the sand?” Apparently Mclean has never met a silence he couldn’t fill. Gail Graham does a fabulous job as second banana, delivering solid insight and very capable commentary. Her performance is all the more laudable given that she has to teach McLean about women’s golf during commercial breaks.
Kind of a ho-hum finish to the the US Amateur at Chambers Bay yesterday. Peter Uihlein (son of Wally, head honcho at Titleist) took an early lead over David Chung and never let up, finishing 4&2. The real excitement was provided by the golf course which sits hard on the shores of Puget Sound, south of Tacoma, WA. The links course is scheduled to host the 2015 US Open and the Amateur was a test case. It has all the bluster of a typical seaside links in the UK but features several holes that might be all world. If the USGA sets up the course to play as designed (hard, fast and dangerous), then that will be one US Open you won’t want to miss.
Another decent outing for David Hearn on the Nationwide Tour. A little slippage on Sunday dropped him out of the top 10 finishers but the $10,000 pay cheque moves him up to 19th place on the all-important money list and still comfortably inside the Top 25. Hearn needs a win or a couple of top three finishes over the next two months to ensure a return to the PGA Tour next year. Apart from Jon Mills, who is still lingering in the neighbourhood, the other Canadians on the Nationwide Tour are at least a long distance call away.
Larry Smich, a journeyman caddie on the LPGA Tour has alleged that two Korean players cheated and tried to cover it up. Both players were DQ’d in Winnipeg. This particular caddie has made other allegations about conspiracies amongst the Koreans. Add recent comments made by LPGA Hall of Famer Carol Mann concerning too many Koreans on the Tour and one has to wonder if there isn’t another xenophobic brouhaha pending. If it isn’t Muslims building a mosque near Ground Zero, it’s Koreans trying to steal the Women’s Tour. Stop the insanity!
Professional Golf Needs More Match Play
For years now we’ve all been lead to believe that match play isn’t a viable format for TV. The past two weeks should go a long way to dispelling that theory.
Both the PGA Tour and the people who run professional golf telecasts have acknowledged the excitement of match play, especially if you get two highly ranked marquee players in the final. But then they turn around and warn that a final pairing of Kevin Sutherland and Chad Campbell (my choice for two players barely registering a pulse) would cause ratings to drop lower than the Toledo Ladies 5-pin Finals.
Last week, the Ryder Cup delivered the most compelling golf all year outside the four majors. The Sunday matches were tense and exciting with most of them very close. Granted the Ryder Cup format brings patriotism into play and that’s hard to top on a weekly basis but the head to head singles matches delivered some personality clashes and raw emotion that is missing on the regular PGA Tour.
This Sunday, the final of the Tour Championship pitted four of the top ranked players in the world in a tight race to the finish. Apart from Ben Curtis sinking a couple of birdie putts and Kenny Perry making a bomb from another area code, the entire telecast was devoted to Sergio Garcia, Camilo Villegas, Anthony Kim and Phil Mickelson. With all four players in the last two groups it had a match play feeling to it.
When you think about most golf telecasts, the focus is always on the leading players and the rest of the field is pretty much ignored. If all the coverage is on the top few players anyway, then why not create additional drama by getting some personality involved. The best way to do that is with a series of matches where players go at it, mano a mano.
The Tour is headed for some serious uncertainty on the financial front in the next few years. Banks, investment companies and auto manufacturers have been the mainstay of sponsorship for many years and each of those sectors is in trouble today. The ability to attract new sponsors may mean remaking the product. Not every field can have Tiger so the ones that don’t might look to alternative formats to lure sponsors and viewers.
One aspect of marketing that is ignored by the Tour is the relationships between the players themselves. There are real rivalries between some players and they could be exploited in a match play environment if the TV announcers had the guts to talk about them. It seems to work for NASCAR, WWE, Ultimate Fighting and tennis. Unfortunately the PGA Tour wants to deliver the saccharine version to America so the rivalries and feuds are never discussed. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if pro golf had a bad boy?
I’m not suggesting that the PGA Tour needs to follow the route of professional wrestling but they might learn something from those sports that are able to exploit personality as part of their marketing. “These guys are good” is OK but a “Vijay Singh / Phil Mickelson Smackdown” sounds like a lot more fun.
Peter Mumford is the Editor and Publisher of Fairways Magazine in Toronto. Fairways is intended for avid golfers and this blog site is an extension of that same philosophy - we don't dumb it down for the uninformed!