Half Price Sale Starts Early In Greensboro!

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They paid $525,000 to help secure this date? 

John Dell reports the stunning news that the last spot on the FedEx Cup schedule isn't all that the folks in Greensboro hoped it would be.

Mark Brazil, the tournament director, says that concession prices have been slashed in an effort to attract fans to Greensboro’s Forest Oaks Country Club for the four days of the tournament and its pro-ams.

“We want the fans to be able to have a great experience out here,” Brazil said. “I ran this idea past other tournament directors, and they said they just never had the guts to do this. But we are focusing on making this a better experience for the fans, even if we might lose a little money with concessions.”

The price for a beer has been cut from $4 to $3, and all Coca-Cola products, including bottled water, will be $1. Other concession prices have also been reduced, Brazil said.

So get them drunk!

The tournament is doing what it can to offset a lack of star power in the field. The Wyndham is the final regular-season tournament of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup, and only the top 144 players in the points race advance to the playoffs, which will start next week.

There is no shortage of players hovering around the 144th spot on the points list, but those already secure for the playoffs are taking the week off. The Wyndham has a $5 million purse with $900,000 going to the winner, but the players are looking at the FedEx Cup points to be won as much as the money.

K.J. Choi, who is ranked 12th and won in Greensboro in 2005, pulled out of the tournament yesterday, citing fatigue. He was the highest-ranked player to have committed to the tournament.

Only two of the top 50 in the updated world rankings are in the field - Davis Love III, the defending champion and ranked 43rd, and Carl Pettersson, ranked 48th. Pettersson, a former player at N.C. State, lives near Raleigh and played his high-school golf at Greensboro Grimlsey.

Davis Love is playing because he's the defending champion and Carl Pettersson is in because it's his hometown event. Otherwise no one in the top 50 would be in to uh, jockey for more points.

I hate to belabor this, but it was noted here a year ago:

Of course, now that we know this final event before the FedEx Cup finale amounts to a shootout between spots 140-150 for those final places in the playoffs, and that it's before a stretch of four straight weeks of golf, is it really that great of a date?

Why would Tiger, Phil or Vijay or any other stars play Greensboro after playing the PGA/WGC Firestone and before the four-week stretch?