The Fall Series Is An Afterthought

Steve Elling at CBS Sportsline says that the PGA Tour’s fall series seems like an afterthought.

Elling writes:

If success with regard to the inaugural FedEx Cup season was measured with a yardstick, the Fall Series seven will be measured with a ruler. By increments both small and large, the marginalization of the fall tournaments has been inarguable.

One golf publication has taken to characterizing the fall events as Nationwide-plus events, a semi-sarcastic nod toward the tour’s developmental Triple-A circuit. In reality, it’s not necessarily an unfair assessment, given the realities of the new tour season as it shaped up in 2007 and beyond.

By establishing the big-money FedEx Cup as the putative end of the season for top players in mid-September, the tour has left those events on the back end fighting for television table scraps and sponsors willing to accept that Tiger Woods will never stand on their first tee, or that that mainstream networks won’t be around to broadcast their competition.

The Fall Series folks were the fall guys for the FedEx Cup.

Brutal, but true. I wonder if there will be any long term implications for the tour if the fall series struggles financially. As a major corporation, there’s no way I would pay premium dollars to sponsor a fall tour event.