The Standing O...

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Now, I love Tadd Fujikawa and it was great to see the fans so energized by his Sony Open performance.

However, did you catch the moment when he arrives at 18 and The Golf Channel's GOLF CHANNEL's Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo join the standing ovation and GC (just a bit too quickly) cuts to the shot of them standing and clapping for Fujikawa?

Did anyone else get a Broadcast News flashback?  

It's hard to imagine Faldo doing that without some instruction.

And needless to say, no major network would allow its announcers to be such homers.

So, was the GC "standing o" staged?  

Mercedes Ratings Put Medicus, LaLanne Infomercials To Shame

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Unfortunately, according to a reader who gets Street and Smith's Sports Business Daily report, Golf Channel's four-round live coverage of the Mercedes Benz Championship averaged 370,728 households, down 44% from the event's four round average on ESPN last year.

The final round averaged a 505,129 households, down 49% from ESPN's 997,310 households in 2006.

Ty Votaw, The PGA Tour's Executive Vice President of Whatever Bob Combs Used To Be In Charge Of, issued this statement...

"Conclusions after only one event--and the first event--in this relationship are not terribly productive. We're pleased with what we achieved in that first event because they were consistent with our projections. 

So even if the numbers were lousy, our VP of Number Crunching got it right, so it's all good! 

We're on track with respect to where the Golf Channel is in distribution.

And that means? 

Production quality, energy levels of the commentators and the way they could personalize the players to a much greater degree were huge positives...

 Yeah those energy levels will pay the bills...

...if you compare what we've been able to achieve in this first week with the numbers in comparison to previous Golf Channel programming numbers, we're doing precisely what the Golf Channel has paid us to do: cause people to find the PGA Tour on the Golf Channel."

They are paying us to up their numbers.

Of course, the Tour's sponsors are also paying handsomely for certain numbers.

Tampa Situation

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Tim Finchem was asked last week about the sponsorship situation for Tampa's March event...

 Q. Speaking of sponsorship, why can't you find one for Tampa, and what's the status there?
COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: I suspect we will, and we are in conversations with a sponsor right now, and we fully anticipate Tampa will be sponsored.

Q. By the time you get to the tournament?
COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: We will have more to say about that in a couple of weeks.

Q. You can't tell us who it is?
COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: That would be announcing it, and we're not prepared to announce it, no. (Laughter).
Bob Harig reports on that discussion today...
PGA Tour marketing executives lobbied Pinellas County tourism officials Wednesday for $4-million, funding they say is necessary to help secure the future of the local professional golf tournament beyond this year.

A presentation to the Tourist Development Council sought $2-million for this year's PGA event - formerly known as the Chrysler Championship - and another $2-million for 2008.

And the money quote...

Bill Foster, a St. Petersburg city councilman, brought up a point that is a factor at every PGA Tour event: Will all the best known players, the ones that draw the biggest crowds and TV audiences, show up.

"If you could assure us that Tiger (Woods), Phil (Mickelson), Vijay (Singh) and Ernie (Els) will be here..." he said.

 

Van Sickle On GC

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Gary Van Sickle offered this reminder why we must be grateful for The Golf Channel GOLF CHANNEL's coverage, even if gets boring.
After only one event, it's way too early to judge The Golf Channel on its new venture into PGA Tour coverage. However, it has small shoes to fill and looked pretty good compared to the last few years in Hawaii with ESPN's C-team of Karl Ravech and Charlie Rymer. We'll reserve judgment until later but two things stood out from the Mercedes Championship.

"Somebody's going to be leading the FedExCup tonight, and it's not going to be one of those two guys."

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Yes, this is what it's come to. Mickelson and Woods aren't at Kapalua, therefore they are behind in FedEx Cup points.

Voila...storyline!

That was a highlight of Tim Finchem gracing the media center at Kapalua for an impassioned exchange...well, actually, a really boring press conference.

On the FedEx Cup:

Everything tells us that we are on the right track, and we are just excited to get this first one down and get our fans an actual list of points, which is going to begin the process of bringing people into recognition of what the FedExCup is all about.
Please name one article not on PGATour.com or TheGolfChannel.com that raves about the FedEx Cup concept, please.
The last comment I'll make, and I'll be happy to take your questions, is simply to congratulate and thank the Golf Channel for their efforts this week. We knew about their plans. We have worked closely with them over the last year, but I think they have done an outstanding job in bringing resources, the number of cameras and new technology, and I'm particularly pleased with the effort they have made with player interviews. We've got a lot of first-time winners here, players who need their story told. We need to get them in front of the fan base, and those interviews are real important.
So we think they have done a fine job this week.

Was it me or were the interviews the worst part of the telecast? Not because of Rich Lerner, who is making the best of a situation, but because the players just are not very interesting?

Asked about the Tiger-Phil no-shows...

You know, as I said at THE TOUR Championship about the same phenomena at THE TOUR Championship, sort of disappointed about that, but let me make two comments.
One is that your question goes to the future, and I'm focused on the future, but I'm also focused on the FedExCup right now.

Uh huh.

The future, in my view, has a lot to do with the new schedule. And we're not going to know until this time next year how that really plays out. We are still in the -- certain decisions have been made about scheduling the last few weeks and this week are still a part of what 2006 was about from a scheduling standpoint.

Oh that makes sense.

On the other hand, you know, and I don't want to sound like I'm trying to sugarcoat things, because I'm not. I am disappointed, and to your point, having a smaller press core here and less eyeballs because Tiger Woods is not at an event is not something that's a positive any week he doesn't play.

But having said that, let me just make also another point, which is that somebody's going to be leading the FedExCup tonight, and it's not going to be one of those two guys.

Wow, this is why he gets the big bucks! What a revelation.

Q. Why was there a conflict with the Sony Open and the Wendy's Champion's Skins Game? They are both being played on the same weekend, Saturday and Sunday.

Oops, that wasn't on the list of pre-approved questions. Where's Ric Clarson?

RIC CLARSON: Wendy's Champions Skins Game is traditionally played on the Super Bowl weekend, and some of the television windows that were available were not available for 2007 only, in order for that event to continue, we needed to move it to this coming weekend, which did put it on the same weekend as the Sony Open.

We did talk to the Friends of Hawaii Charities about it as a one-year situation, and we've already assigned dates to that event for the organizers to start working on their television packages. We wanted to keep the events going and showcase the tomorrow Champions Tour players, different islands, different air times. And while it might fragment a tad of the media core here in Hawaii for it, but we thought over the long haul, it would be best to be able to maintain that event.

Fragment a tad of the media core here. Translation: the scribblers from the Hawaiian papers are going to have to decide what they are going to cover.

Q. With such enthusiasm on the staff's part about the FedExCup, and interest in educating and so forth, I was out there so much that when Vijay came out here and was asked about it on Thursday, he said was tired of listening to it and went on to compare it to the Presidents Cup. At what point do you scale back the full core press on FedExCup promotion, and at the same time still keep people educated on what it is?

Somebody's tired of the uh, branding. 

COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: Well, we could promote it, you know, none, or promote it five times as much, and that really wouldn't be what affects you guys asking Vijay questions.

I think what he said was he was tired of answering questions about the FedExCup.

Q. It could have been anything with us, too. (Laughter).

COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: And there is a lot of questions about the FedExCup because everyone wants to know what they think, and that's a good thing.

Vijay has been pretty, consistent starting with last year, about his enthusiasm for the FedExCup. The fact that he individually determined that he had said that enough, that's his prerogative, and it doesn't have anything to do with our promotion plans. We think we're on the right course in terms of explaining to fans what the FedExCup is, and we will continue to do so.

I think the thing about the FedExCup -- somebody asked me the other day, or I saw a comment, that perhaps it was complicated. I'll just say, I think it's the perfect thing. I mean, it's very simple. It's very, very simple. You get points, the guy who gets the most, wins.

Very, very simple?

Now as a fan, you could settle for that amount of information, and you could watch each week, the standings, and wait to see who gets the most points, and you might be satisfied with that. Based on our research and what we're seeing in terms of inquiries, there's a lot of fans that want to know a lot more.

Riiiiiiiigggggggggghhhhhhhhhttttttttttt!

They want to know, you know, how many points are distributed, where they are distributed. They want to know -- they want to know how a player's schedule relates to point accumulation. They want to know how the intervals and the seeding react to a player who is 10th or 15th or 18th on the list having a chance to win.

And so I think that that's probably true in every sport. If you take all of the fans and put them on a grid, they want to know varying degrees of detail about statistics or the competition.

Putting the fans on a grid? These guys are good!

At its core, the FedExCup is a very simple process, but we are going to see people spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure it out. And you'll see the television commentators as we get into the season, if Player X birdies this hole, he's on this par 5 in two; if he two-putts for a birdie, he'll pick up X number of points, and he'll move from sixth to fourth or more. So you'll see a lot of that during the course of the season.

And won't it be life changing for us fans.

I think it's going to be a year, really, until the Playoffs are fully played out before people really do have a sense of it. Sometimes I rely on my wife, Holly, as a barometer, and she was extremely interested in the golf week article that laid out different scenarios of point distribution. She said, her reaction was, "This is fascinating how this could play out."
First it was his dad and now the wife he cites for market research. Kind reminds you of someone else, doesn't it? Actually, that other guy doesn't even listen to his dad.
We hope people are fascinated. But I think everything dramatically changes tonight when we have a leaderboard, we have points distributed, people will know how many you get for winning. That's going to be clear on into the season.

Amen brother. I can't wait to study where we stand with 30+ weeks to go.

Q. How do you define success then? At the end of the year when you're trying to figure out to change it or not change it, what would you measure as success, to say, this succeeded, so there's no reason to change it?

COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: Well, let's say that we got to a point where a player was seeded first, won the tournament, the first playoff event, and the next eight guys have all missed the cut and this guy was sailing -- it was almost inevitable that he would win. Our models tell us that's not going to happen. Well, let's suppose it did. Then we might want to change the intervals. We might want to reduce that size of the interval.

Key word today: interval.

"Big Five" No More

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SI's Alan Shipnuck comes out firing with several stellar zingers in his 2007 preview, starting with this reminder of yesteryear's desperation-for-stars media coverage:

5. Will any golf writer be able to use the term "Big Five" without breaking into hysterical laughter?

It's gonna be tough. Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen combined to win one Tour event in '06. Singh is approaching the precipice of the mid-40s, when performance drops off dramatically. Goosen has never been the same players since his final round self-immolation at the 2005 U.S. Open. The guy to watch is Els.

His season-ending victory in South Africa was a huge boost to his fragile psyche. Afterward, Easy even had some fighting words for Tiger, as Els said his goal is to reach No. 1 in the World Ranking. I'm not convinced he believes he can do it, but it at least sounded good. A return to Oakmont, where he broke through with his first major championship at the '94 Open, should inspire Els to reassert himself as one of the game's elite players. It's about time.

I did catch Alex Micelli wondering how it is that Goosen remains in the world top 10 despite a pretty lousy year in 2006. But why would I want to start a world rankings debate? It's not that slow of a week. 

As The Woods Camp Requested...

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File this Tim Rosaforte paragraph in the buried-lead file. He's writing about Tiger not appearing at Kapalua:

In truth, this could have been averted. Had the Target World Challenge been scheduled the week after Thanksgiving, as the Woods Camp requested, instead of two weeks from Christmas, it would have given Tiger almost a month of downtime before getting back to business at Kapalua. Instead, The Target was given Dec. 14-17, and Mercedes/Kapalua takes the hit.

Hmmmm...do we have a Commissioner-Tiger spat in the making here?

"This makes every game, every event, every weekend more important.''

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This caught my eye in Rex Hoggard's preview of 2007:

Flash forward eight months to the much-talked-about FedEx Cup finale at the Tour Championship. Best-case scenario is a Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson vs. "Little-known Cinderella story" showdown for the inaugural FedEx Cup title in Atlanta at the Tour Championship. Problem is, the new condensed-season shop will make it virtually impossible for a potential "Cinderella" story to elbow his way into the FedEx mix.

Consider Michael Allen finished 153rd on last year's money list and played for an average purse of $4.6 million, compared to Ben Curtis (No. 30 in '06 earnings) who played to an average of $5.6 million or Scott Verplank (No. 40) $5.7 million.

As one player recently lamented of the bottom half of the Tour community, "They've got a ticket to get on the bus, but there's no seat for them." start. "This makes every game, every event, every weekend more important.''

Okay, not to beat dead donkey here, but how will a playoff with 144 players really change someone's approach to the season?