posted Aug 29, 2007

re: Rich men throwing coffers for ragamuffins.

Yes, it does sound like that.

But: The FedEx series was only initiated because Woods and Mickelson weren't playing end-of-year events anyway and had even abandoned the season-concluding Tour Championship. (Of course, Woods then played in his own Tournament and for guaranteed money around the world but that's another story.)

But there really is something to play for for the mere mortals as each threshhold on the money list awards certain exemptions to 2008 tournaments:

For example:
Top 30 / Top 40 secure exemptions at various majors.

Top 70 means exemption to "invitationals", such as Bay Hill, Memorial, Colonial and Harbour Town. (Poulter, Davis, Jacobson could be effected here for instance.)

And then top 125 secures a Tour card for 2008, top 150 secures conditional status, 151 and below guarantees a trip back to Q-school. (Interesting times for Owen, Hansen and Parnevik, let alone Howell, Clarke and Westwood; if they don't retain their cards you can expect them to play more Euro events next year which must be a good thing, no?)

These may sound trivial, but put altogether a non-top 70 player has significantly fewer opportunities to play rich events with lots of ranking points as well as cash.

I'm looking forward to the first event on a terrific course in New York's Mohawk Valley and I bet the field will be interesting enough and quite deep.

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posted Aug 29, 2007

Oh dont get me wrong, the event slook interesting and it does sound as it will lead to an interesting run in to the end of the season.

I wouldn't mind the "Race for the Card" so much if the top boys had actually had to work the previous 4 weeks to get their annuity.

Its the FedEx that I think loses out more by taking some of the protracted drama out by allowing players byes, including Ernie.

I would rather that those who made the cut on Week 1 made it to Week 2. Those who make the cut in Week 2 go to Week 3 and so on. Then we see drama in the first 2 days of every week.

Imagine Tiger struggling on the first day of Week 1 and having to shoot a 64 to make the cut and the rest of the series. Now that would be compelling viewing.

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posted Aug 29, 2007

the indisputable fact is that fedex has wrecked eurotour for 2007

PATHETIC field every ween on this side of atlantic since OPEN - Gleneagles field this week is awful and next week is even worse

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posted Aug 29, 2007

Surely the PGA tour doesn't depend on Woods and Mickelson turning up 6 weeks out of every 8 on ordinary PGA Tour event duty, including from late august to late October.

Pre Fedex Cup era, what was there to motivate Woods to compete in a whole host of PGA Tour events after the final major of the year and final individal world golf championship event of the year with an already unassailable lead in the money list? Absolutely nothing.

In the now Fedex Cup era, Woods doesn't feel in the mood to have to have to play 4 specified weeks in a row late August to mid September and to have to win the Fedex Cup to prove he's the best player on the PGA Tour, as he's already done so before the Fedex Cup series began with an unassailable true money list lead.

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posted Aug 30, 2007

I think it'd be a fair comment to say that the Euro PGAtour was wrecked long before the Fed Ex Cup started.

Slowly year on year since the mid 1990s the European tour has become something of a sideshow compared to the US tour. It's been reflected in the increasingly average fields and average 'tournament' courses which have come to represent the European tour - there was a time when the star European golfers were synonomus with the best players in the world (e.g. Seve, Faldo, Woosie, et al.) now the stars of the European tour include the likes of Poulter and Westwood - 'stars' i ask you. In harmony with this shift has been the tournaments being increasingly played on Hotel resort style courses which increasingly result in a pretty homogenous golfing and visual experience - there are exceptions no doubt (e.g. Wentworth, Valderama and The French National course) but on the whole the days of playing tour golf on the top European courses week in week out are long gone.

I'm not sure if one has followed the other i.e. mediocre courses have produced (on the whole) mediocre golfers but it could be argued that when the PGA tour increasingly moved away from the resort course experience that the quality and excitement of play began to return (yes i know there are still some tournaments played on said courses but it seems to me that on the whole that the PGA tour most often puts course quality/golfing test ahead of corporate course demands i.e the European Open).

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posted Sep 4, 2007

I think this whole Fed-Ex series is a ploy by the USPGA that has potentially backfired.

Whilst the US tour is certainly the dominant tour in golf, the European tour has been growing in prestige and financial clout recently and has as a result repeatedly kept high profile players such as Els, Goosen, Casey, Monty and Cabrera away from US shores for prolongued periods.

In an attempt to regain the commitment of the top 20 on an almost weekly basis, they've introduced extra events that supposedly were too financially lucrative to tun down, but all they've done is over congested the schedule and turned players off playing at all for fortnights at a time.

The last thing the US tour needed was more events. Europe should capitalise on this now by maybe axing a couple of minor events like the Alfred Dunhill or the Madeira Islands event, pump more revenue into flagship events like the PGA, the Euro Masters and the National opens (Spain, Scandanvian etc). I really believe more and more players will be attracted to the more relaxed, less congested less "2nd place is nowhere" attitudes of the Euro tour.

Golfers have always primarily followed the money, and fair play to them for that, don't get me wrong, the US tour is cracking entertainment. But with players like Els, Goosen and Campbell all having their homes in England, if there were a couple more financially competative events in Europe, I truly believe they'd prefer to split their time 50/50, unlike the 70/30 split it is at the moment.

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posted Sep 4, 2007

Dead right Joe_Green.

My view is that the FedEx experiment has had a number of unexpected consequences, the most crucial of which is that the top-level players are well and truly knackered. (Apart from those we've read about, players like Furyk and Toms seem to feel obligated to enter events they're not fit to contend.)

Given the absence this week of Goydos, Harrington and Langer, not to mention Phil and any others, some Timmy Finchem soul-searching is overdue.

Meanwhile, some quality over quantity approach by George O'Grady, as you suggest, may be timely.

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posted Sep 4, 2007

I feel sorry to say this but when you are showboating your profession you cannot compain about the fact that although you have been playing tournaments week after week and yes big tournaments, the added coporate events have made you more tired. They are paying you top whack for a round and a bit of talking with the people who help to put money into the game. At the end of the day the problems with the Fedex Cup are that (a) 10 million is not enough of a prize from the 35 million - it should be 25 million with nothing going below say 30th (Tour Championship). (b) it is an annuity, give the money to them now, then they can pay the caddy instead of an IOU

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posted Sep 5, 2007

monty is the past - els and goosen no longer win in usa - cabrera rarely plays in europe

european tour counts 6 events played in usa and many in china which is why it appears to a casual observer that certain players are often in europe

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posted Sep 5, 2007

I confess crookedken I find your comments a bit confusing. Monty is at the tail end of his career, but remains in the top 50. Els doesn't win as much as he did, but hasn't been outside the top 5 in the past few years (if you discount injury abscences), and I've checked the European tour results, Cabrera, before the US open win, played more on the European tour than almost any other top 40 European, more than Donald, Els, Poulter and Goosen. Since winning the US, of course he'll play more in the US as he'll be maximising his endorsement value for a year or so, just like M.Campbell did.

And I know the European tour includes events in Asia, Australasia and Africa, but that's the European tour, it's been that way since the 70's (with the exception of China).

I'm not suggesting the European tour is anything other than the 2nd place tour to America, but The European tour prize fund is rising each year, many of the top European players have repeatedly gone on record as saying the prefer the E-Tour, but play in America for the money (understandable), and if you check the records, you'll see that whilst players like Cabrera and Els do spend most of the year in America, they do have prolongued spells on the European tour.

For example, when the tour played 3 events in SA, then 3 events in the middle east, Els was entered in all 6, playing consistently on the E-Tour from late Dec to February.

And finally, the point about 6 Euro tour events being in America, 3 of them are majors and are therefore listed as events on EVERY single tour. The Argentinian national tour will list the Masters etc as events. So it's only 3 event,s and by my understanding, the US tour lists The Open, the WMC at Wentworth and last years Bridgestone WGC as part of their tour... so that would make it even.

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