Category: FedEx Cup
The FedEx Cup is the PGA Tour's name for its new end-of-season championship. Consisting of four rounds, in which the field is reduced at each stage, the finals will be played Sept. 13 - 16 at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. East Lake, perhaps not coincidentally, was the home club of Bobby Jones.
Loss of Western Open Hard To Swallow
Bob Harig of ESPN says that the loss of the Western Open is “hard to swallow.”
Western Open RIP
I will never forgive the PGA Tour for destroying the Western Open. For that, and for many other reasons, I increasingly am hoping that the FedEx Cup is a bust that costs Finchem his job.
First played in 1899 (the same year my home course opened), the Western Open was created by the Western Golf Association, which at one time seriously contended with the USGA as the arbiter of golf in the United States. Before being reworked by the PGA Tour, the Western Open was was golf’s third oldest tournament (behind the Open Championship and the US Open). For years—prior to the rise of the Masters—it was rightly considered a “major” championship, for it attracted the best talent in the game. Originally played at different midwest locations, it also has been held in Arizona, Utah, California and Tennessee. Since 1962, however, the Western Open has been held in the Chicago Area.
Over the years, tournament winners have included some of the biggest names in golf: Willie Anderson, Chick Evans (amateur), Walter Hagen, Jim Barnes, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Billy Casper. It continued to be a significant tournament until 2006.
One of the things that made the Western special was its support of the Evans Scholarship Foundation. Founded by the outstanding amateur Chick Evans (who would be much better remembered if not for Bobby Jones), the Evans Scholarships supports the college careers of former caddies. It’s the nation’s largest privately funded college scholarship program, and has provided college educations to more than 8,400 caddies while making tuition scholarship payments totaling more than $100 million. There currently are 823 caddies on Evans Scholarships, living in one of 14 “Scholarship Houses.” There’s a Scholarship House here in Ann Arbor, just off Washtenaw Avenue.
I’m certain that the Western Golf Association is still getting its portion of tournament proceeds for the Scholarship Fund, but its clear that the focus will be changed. The tournament no longer is about the Western Golf Association and its works. It’s about the ego driven FedEx Cup.
In killing this tournament (and others like the BC Open), the PGA Tour has shown that it has absolutely no respect for history—only short term gains. In search of the almighty dollar they renamed the event the BMW. Desperate for a relevant event, the Tour destroyed the “Open” concept and made it a limited field, professional only event. Needing to fit it into their ill-conceived FedEx Cup Championship, they moved the event from July—where it actually was watched—to the first weekend of regular season NFL play. The Western Golf Association surely had no choice in the matter. It was either play along with the Tour, or get screwed like the Canadian Open.
The Western Open is no more and golf is less rich for its loss.
Finchem Slits Wrists
Ok. Tim Finchem hasn’t really slit his wrists, but he surely must want to. Phil Mickelson, winner of last week’s Deutsche Bank Championship is skipping this weeks installment of the FedEx Championship. Worse, it appears as though it may be the result of an unspecified conflict with Finchem.
LEMONT, Ill.—Phil Mickelson withdrew Tuesday from the BMW Championship, one day after threatening not to play because of a conflict he had with PGA TOUR commissioner Tim Finchem over issues he wouldn’t explain.
“This decision was not an easy one to make, and in no way is meant as disrespectful to the tour or ‘sending a message’ to anyone,” Mickelson said in a statement. “I’ve talked for weeks about needing to find a balance between my game, my business affairs and my family, and now is the time for me to take some time off.”
Mickelson was playing a corporate outing with sponsor Bearing Point in the Chicago area. He said he would be in Atlanta next week for the TOUR Championship.
Its interesting that Phil can be in the Chicago area for an outing, but not play in the Chicago area BMW (formerly Western Open).
Phil’s not alone. Padraig Harrington, winner of this years British Open Championship, won’t be there either.
This isn’t working out the way the Tour planned it. In fact, it’s all gone horribly wrong. First Tiger takes a bye. Then Phil, while leading the Championship, takes a week off. Ernie Els also has gone missing during the series.
I honestly think the Tour should give up on this one. I’ve been predicting the defection of the top players since the beginning. As I overheard a longtime tour player say at the Buick:
“These guys don’t care about the Fedex Cup. They only care about Majors. If they win the Fedex Cup, they’ll just pitch it.”
The problem is, some of the top guys are pitching it before they win it.
Stricker’s Comeback
The Scotsman has a nice profile of Steve Stricker, who has arisen like a phoenix to win the first round of the FedEx Cup.
Taking The Tour To Task
John Huggan in the Scotsman takes the PGA Tour behind the woodshed for a whipping. The FedEx Cup, he says, is nonsense.
Such nonsense, of course, is merely the latest attempt by commissioner Tim Finchem to set a place for himself at golf’s top table, where sit the Masters, run by the Augusta National Golf Club; the US Open (United States Golf Association), the Open (Royal & Ancient Golf Club), the USPGA (PGA of America) and the Ryder Cup (PGA of America and European Tour). The world’s biggest and richest circuit, the PGA Tour, has long been driven crazy by its almost total lack of influence over any of the game’s five most important and lucrative events.
Which is why the Presidents Cup matches, a glorified exhibition between a 12-man team from the US and another drawn from anywhere and everywhere except Europe, exists. Ticked-off Tim wants to be the centre of attention.
Sadly for his sizeable ego, however, the Fed-Ex Cup has just about the same level of (in)credibility as does the transparently tacky PC, a biennial affair that is but a pale imitation of the Ryder Cup.
Devised largely as a means of getting the too-often absent Woods to play more PGA Tour events, the Fed-Ex Cup overflowed as soon as he, citing “fatigue” (yeah, right Tiger), decided not to play in the first of the four play-off events, the Barclays Classic, that concludes today.
At a stroke, the absence of the tour’s biggest asset, a man who plays for history rather than cash, revealed the whole sordid affair as nothing more than the money-grabbing farce that it is, a fact underlined by the much-ballyhooed $10m first prize - which is payable only when the recipient decides to retire, according to the very small print.
He’s absolutely right, of course.
