Questioning Finchem

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Ed Sherman on his Chicago Tribune golf blog:

...to hear people talk, rotating the tournament to other Midwest cities also was part of the price. No way. The Evans Scholars would make just as much money if the tournament stayed at Cog Hill.

We spent the entire week in the press room trying to figure out why PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem made this decision. There has to be something we're missing, perhaps some grand marketing scheme that is way over our feeble brains.

I don't think so. There can't be a reasonable explanation why the PGA Tour would leave the nation's third largest market to go to much smaller towns in the Midwest.

Even worse, do you realize in 2008 the Tour won't be in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.? When I asked Jim Furyk about that situation last week, he tried to be diplomatic, but you could see he was troubled by the Tour's lack of presence in the major markets.

Perhaps, the Tour wants to go small-time.  That has to be it, because its thinking certainly is small time.

They Understand The FedEx Cup In Chicago (Well, not really)

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In a Q&A with Mike Spellman dubbed, "Let's wait, see about BMW Championship," Western Golf Association's Don Johnson demonstrates little idea of the FedEx Cup is going to work, and little enthusiasm for the scheduling change. Welcome to the club Don!

Q. When you first heard the idea of this playoff system, what were your thoughts?

A. I was confused.

Q. How long did it take to get unconfused?

A. Well, I’m not sure that I am. The point system and everything … I think anybody in the golf business who’s forthright about it is going to tell you we have to wait and see how this thing is going to work. The PGA Tour thinks it’s going to be wonderful, and I hope they’re right.

Q. It’s kind of a roll of the dice, isn’t it?

A. Yeah. And they may have to tweak it a little bit after the first year when they see how it actually works in fact as opposed to in theory. It’s certainly going to be a great thing for us being the final tournament before the Tour Championship.

Q. Why is the move from the Fourth of July to Labor Day a good thing?

A. The jury is still out on that, to be honest about it. I don’t know what happens to the interest in golf in Chicago after Labor Day. I’m hoping this event will be so spectacular that they’ll turn out, but we have to wait and see. It’s a work in progress.

Q. Your main worry about the September date?

A. You’ve got your Labor Day drop-off in golf, and then you’ve got Big Ten football, Notre Dame football; you’ve got baseball heading toward the playoffs … but we won’t have Taste of Chicago. There will be some competition we don’t have now. We’ll have to wait and see.

Q. Do the smaller crowds this year give you cause for concern next year?

A. Yes. The answer to that is yes. I worry that this week with the field we’ve had and the weather, that we have less people here than we had last year. (On Saturday) we had 7,000 less. That’s a lot. I don’t get it.


Latest On B.C.

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Thanks to readers John and David for this Kevin Stevens story on the B.C. Open's plight, which will be determined by the PGA Tour's Slugger Wayne White, in consultation with the Tour Policy Board.

"Nothing has been finalized or will be finalized until Henry and (other tour staff members) have an opportunity to talk to the PGA Tour Policy Board," White said.

Discussions with the Policy Board are to take place today in the form of a conference call. The board includes player directors Joe Durant, Davis Love III, Scott McCarron and Joe Ogilvie, a quartet that has played in a collective 13 B.C. Opens -- none more recently than 2002, when Ogilvie was first-round co-leader.

Nice little zinger Kevin! 

Hartford Attendance

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Jeff Jacobs in the Harford Courant:

This used to be the annual state fair, and it can be again.

There were an estimated 305,000 for four days as late as 2002. In 1994, there were 322,000, and the following year 300,000. It always was more than 200,000.

In 2004, it had dropped to a four-day total of 150,000. Last year, it was 80,000.

Tournament officials don't release attendance figures until the end of the event these days, but before the numbers come out, here's the unofficial first-round count for Thursday.

Dismal.

The attendance was much better on Saturday, definite sparks of glory, a harbinger of good things, but still not like in past years. We've seen 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 for a single weekend round. They couldn't have all been freebies. Those are mind-boggling numbers matched only by the tournament in Phoenix, which, incidentally, is the only place where Henry previously has played in the final group on a Sunday.

Finchem On Washington

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BoozAllen05.gifBoy, after reading the recent stuff from Carolyn Bivens, Tim Finchem's press conferences are so boring!

Still, it was a combative teleconference with the Washington scribblers on demise of the Booze Allen and the reconstruction of TPC Avenel:

With respect to how we got to the scheduling decision, as I indicated at the end of our television negotiations, when we released our schedule earlier in the year, we felt like it was important to give as many weeks to possible consistent dates. We could have gone to a continuation of a situation where some years we play earlier in the summer in Washington, like we played last year, and other years we could play later in the summer. The feeling was that we would continue to have an inconsistent execution of our product, probably the fallout of that being a lack of continuity with the title sponsor, which has certainly been the case there since Kemper left. We just didn't want to go down that road. We wanted to try something we felt like had a better chance of continual year in, year out success.

I've always said, that if you can't have consistent product execution, it's just not worth it. 

Q. Big picture question. How did the tournament in DC, one of the biggest markets in the nation, nation's capital, wind up on the outside looking in as far as the good dates go, and some tournaments in smaller markets, like the 84 Lumber in Greensboro, not nearly as well supported by the public as this one, how did they end up with the good dates and this tournament was on the out?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: First of all, it's kind of hard to answer that question in the way you phrase it because you're assuming certain things about a "good date." We have dates on our schedule from the first week in January right through now the fall series to November. What's a good date for one market is not a good date for another market. What's a good date for a particular sponsor is not a good date for another sponsor in the same market. There are a lot of variables in terms of what goes into a date.

I think that the reaction to the date change in Washington has really been focused on one thing, and that is being in the FedEx Cup season, early summer, is preferable to anything else. I certainly wouldn't argue the point that being in the FedEx Cup season is an advantage. But I think the reaction perhaps has been a little bit overdone in terms of the negativity of the fall, as I said earlier.

The bottom line is that we were not comfortable, and frankly neither was Booz Allen, in continuing a date structure that has historically led to an event that would not be the kind of event on a number of levels that we'd like to see over the long term in the nation's capital. We wanted an opportunity to do something better. We thought consistent dates was part of that, but there are other factors.

This is a little weird....

TODD BUDNICK: Thank you very much for your time today, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Thank you, Todd.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you need additional information, we're available to you. I know a couple of you have called in the last couple of weeks. I've deferred those conversations until I had an opportunity to make comments generally today. In the aftermath of this week's tournament, I'd be happy to make myself available or other people on our team. We'll have more to say about Avenel here very shortly after the public hearing.

In the meantime, I would encourage you to cover this week's tournament. We have a lot of great players there, good golf course, we're looking forward to a good competition. Thank you.

I would encourage you to cover this week's tournament? What else would they cover? 

"We don't want it to be a lay-down course"

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Gary Baines looks at the technology debate and talks to the tournament director at The International, who has some interesting things to say.

Winged Foot, a course dating back to 1923, proved anything but obsolete. It played plenty long (7,264 yards for a par-70 layout), but it was obvious that wasn't the main reason that the Open produced its highest score relative to par (5 over) since 1974.

Instead, the key to protecting par was narrowing the fairways and growing the rough so that the long bombers on tour have to think twice before ripping a driver as hard as possible on every hole over 300 yards. Winged Foot did that with many fairways 25-28 yards wide and rough as deep as 51/2 inches.
Oh yes, you can see where this is going.

 

Larry Thiel, executive director for the International tournament in Castle Rock, was at Winged Foot during U.S. Open week and liked what he saw in the way of a course set-up for the Open.

"I thought the set-up was fair," Thiel said. "You don't have to have 7,800-yard golf courses. The rough is supposed to be penal, and I don't think it was overly penal. If you can't drive the ball straight into a 30-35-yard-wide opening, you ought to do something to your game, downsizing your club until you can."

Of course that was the U.S. Open, a once a year event designed to be a unique test. The International, with its Stableford scoring meant to elicit heroic play, would never look to Winged Foot for inspiration, would it?

They don't want to see the players always swing as hard as they can from tees on par-4s and par-5s because the reward is so great and there isn't a big downside.

That's why even at Castle Pines the fairways have been narrowed over the years. That's undoubtedly part of the reason the winning scores at the International have come down in the last couple of years. After cumulative winning totals of at least 44 points in every year but one from 1997 through 2003, the winning numbers have been 31 and 32 the last two summers. Other things that have factored in are additional water hazards and the lengthening of the par-5 eighth hole.

As Thiel said several years ago, "We don't want it to be a lay-down course."

No, because God know, the ratings aren't low enough yet. We've got to get them into the NHL's league before we can rest  assured.

On many courses on the PGA Tour, players "can stand on the tee and whale on it," Thiel said this week. "We're guilty of it too. The players aren't penalized for errant shots. What you think is a monstrous hole is far from a monstrous hole for these guys."

Thiel estimates the fairways at Castle Pines are mostly 30-50 yards wide, which is generous but not as wide as they used to be.

"We've gradually worked them in," Thiel said.

Oh good! 

"We're always thinking about what makes the course more competitive and fair. We're trying to neutralize guys just stepping back and going at it as hard as they can without any fear."

Because the game is just so easy for those flat belly Tour boys! And then Thiel offers this from William Flynn:

"He believed a good shot should be rewarded and a bad shot penalized," Thiel said. "It's a pretty simple formula."

You know...eh forget it. 

An Observation From Muirfield Village

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A reader who was at the Memorial wanted to note that another element adding a bit of curiosity to the whole furrowing madness: fairway bunkers were cared for by the grounds crew while greenside bunkers were handled by the caddies. (This would explain why we saw "Bones" walk away from the 6th hole fairway bunker with Mickelson after that miraculous shot Sunday.)

The reader also notes that with the caddies handling the greenside bunkers, players were at the mercy of the players in the groups ahead of them as much as they were at the mercy of furrows. 

In other words, as much fun as it was to see danger returned to the hazards, they needed to think this one through a bit better.

"If the Tour decides to implement furrowing as part of a larger strategy to counteract technology..."

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Ryan Ballangee writes about the bunker furrowing at Muirfield Village:

...the question is this - if the Tour decides to implement this strategy in the long haul, is this a good move by the Tour? The answer, like most things, is "it depends."

If you are a purist like I am, then the answer may very well be that it is good. Since there is no action on equipment restrictions, the Tour can add this into its arsenal of setup changes it can make in an effort to discourage bombing and increase the penalty for inaccuracy. The problem, though, is that many Tour stops do not have very significant bunkering. This means that furrowed raking would only be prominent at a percentage of Tour stops. In essence, it's a six shooter with two bullets.

If you are a Tour marketer, then this is a terrible idea. There are only four weeks of the year that fans look forward to the best players in the world being made to look like fools - the major championships. In particular, the number one week for that is the US Open. The rest of the year, the fans are looking for interesting setups that reward accuracy, are not too gimmicky, and attract good fields. If the Tour decides to implement furrowing as part of a larger strategy to counteract technology, then they may actually upset some of the top players in the process. This could prove to hurt the potential of the FedEx Cup (not that it has any right now) and fly in the face of its goals.

Oh but the irony is so sweet!

Sand Saves At Memorial

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Ken Gordon reports in the Columbus Dispatch:
The first-round sand-save percentage (36.0) was the lowest of the Memorial Tournament. Cumulatively, it ended at 43.8 percent, still lower than the PGA Tour average coming in (49.1) and the 2005 Memorial (47.1), but certainly not a catastrophe.
And this...
"It was more of a game strategy than it was bunker play," Stewart Cink said, "because there’s no way to hit out a good shot out of these terrible lies."