"The two parties love to squalk about each other"
/The Journal News' Sam Weinman has a good feel for the Westchester CC-PGA Tour situation, and blogs about it and about being slightly scooped by Damon Hack in the New York Times:
I’ve been following the tour’s tenuous relationship with Westchester pretty much since I started writing about golf in the late 90s, and the same fundamentals still apply. The two parties love to squalk about each other—Westchester members lamenting the inconvenience of the event, the tour lamenting Westchester’s high-maintenance membership—and yet they can’t seem to live without each other.
In some ways, this deal is a match made in heaven. Westchester still has the prestige of hosting a PGA Tour event (a FedEx Cup playoff event no less!), but doesn’t have to do it on an annual basis. Meanwhile the tour can try to capitalize on other pockets of the New York market—I haven’t been to Liberty National but I’ve only heard good things—but can also consistently return to a traditional venue that many of its players still revere.
It seems the Tour's strategy is not to get away from Westchester or the Western but to give the playoffs more excitement by injecting fresh venues. I like the idea of placing an emphasis on architecture and varying setups, though I could also see the merits of returning to the same courses each year too in order to build "tradition." Thoughts?