Finchem Whiffs, Phil Closes Him Out 3&2

The behind the scenes tug-of-war between Phil Mickelson and Tim Finchem elicited an unprecedented admission of error from Commissioner Tom.

Doug Ferguson reports on Finchem's reponse to news that fall PGA Tour events will not be part of the Ryder Cup chase:

"It's particularly annoying to me that I missed it because we had just been wrestling with this on FedEx Cup points for the last number of years," Finchem said. "We would like to see them included ... because I think it's good for those tournaments. I honestly I don't think it makes any significant difference in the final compilation of the team, either.

"So moving away from that in any particular degree, even though it may not be all that important, it is important," he said. "So we're going to have more conversations about that but we will be speaking out to the PGA on that question."

Mickelson stood his ground when asked about the commish's comments. Rex Hoggard reports:

“We’ve have been trying, the last two years, to have a wraparound schedule and I’m not really a big fan of it. It’s hard for spectators to understand it. I can’t understand it,” Mickelson said on Sunday at Doral.

“After playing eight out of 10 or eight out of 11 weeks the guys are going to take time off and from the Ryder Cup standpoint it doesn’t make sense to have points assessed on those events when none of the top players, or few of the top players, are playing and maybe the FedEx Cup should look at it as well. Maybe that’s not the best place to start [the season] out.”

The full Mickelson transcript is here, if you have nothing else today besides reveling in first world tug-of-wars.

Of more interest was this item from Hoggard on Finchem explaining why the tour broke from its no comment policy to deny the recent claims by a former PGA Tour player suggesting Tiger was a PED user.

“When there is an off-the-wall comment by a player that incites the PGA Tour and there is absolutely no merit to it, from time to time we say and that’s what we did in this case,” Finchem said. “It’s the one area that gives us some trouble from time to time.”

So when there is some merit, and there is no response from the tour, does that mean there is something to the story?