Who had the better year: Tiger or Lorena Ochoa

An interesting bit from Doug Ferguson notes that the PGA Tour seriously underestimated the amount of money that it would take to keep a tour card this year. Tour officials originally estimated that it would take $700,000 to stay in the top 125; the actual number is going to be north of $150,000.

“I was surprised,” said Andy Pazder, the tour’s vice president of competition. “We saw something in the $700,000 range, and that number has come and gone. It’s moving toward $750,000 and beyond. I can’t explain it without having analyzed some things.”

I can venture a guess as to what’s happened. The FedEx Cup series redistributed the money. Most of the big money players quit for the year after the FedExCup, leaving more for the second tier guys. Those guys now are competing for purses without having the dozen or so “automatics” suck up the cash in every tournament.

So, in a sense, the Tour’s plan is working. The Fall Series is more interesting precisely because of the reshuffling of the tour cards.

Match Play returns this weekend to professional golf with the HSBC World Match Play Championships. As far as the GolfBlogger is concerned, Match Play is the golf’s most exciting format. With each hole, a skirmish is resolved, with one player emerging as a clear victor. And unlike medal play, where you know that a tournament is going for 72 holes, regardless of how far out in front Tiger is, Match Play can come to a sudden, shocking end.

Here’s a link to GolfBlogger’s Guide To Match Play.

I just got the PGA Partners Tour email newsletter dated October 10, 2007. I think they’re a little behind the curve:

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.

I’ve been waiting for this one to show up on YouTube. Woody is going to live forever in this clip.

This year, David Duval used a one-time exemption to keep his card for the 2007 season. Unfortunately, he was unable to play for most of the season because he was taking care of his wife, who was having a difficult pregnancy. Mrs. GolfBlogger was on bed rest for months with both of our children, so I know just how trying such a situation can be.

Since he only returned to the Tour a week ago, it was apparent that he wasn’t going to have a chance to win his card back. He hadn’t been practicing and there simply weren’t enough tournaments left for him to get into the top 125. I suggested in a post last week that he should get another chance, based on the assumptions in the Family Leave Act—that worker can take time off to care for a family member without losing their jobs. If Duval had blown out a knee, he would have been given an exemption. So he should get one for a family medical crisis.

The PGA Tour apparently now agrees with The Golf Blogger. They have added “family crisis” to the medical exemption regulation.

Good for them.

It’s also good to hear that Duval’s wife and child are doing fine.