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PGA tour looking for its own world series
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-01 10:42
Finchem believes golf can hold its own in September when football is just
getting started, and would fare much better than in early November when the Tour
Championship typically is held. He was inspired by higher ratings the last two
months at the Presidents Cup, which came down to the final match, and the
American Express Championship, where Tiger Woods beat John Daly in a playoff.
"Good tournaments can compete and perform very nicely," Finchem said. "And
the Tour Championship doesn't do that bad, but it's too far removed. It
reinforced to us that if you put something special out there, we can carry the
audience with us into September. And if it's a strong enough finish, then the
season becomes more important."
This isn't the first time the tour has tried to revamp the end of the year.
It created the Vantage Championship in 1986, which offered a $1 million purse
— enormous in those days — along with a $500,000 bonus to the winner of a
season-long points competition. Also available was a $25,000 bonus for leading
each of the nine statistical categories.
The event was tweaked a year later. The Nabisco Championship — the precursor
to the Tour Championship — again offered massive prize money and a separate
payoff for the points race, only all the money counted as official.
"When it first was played in 1987, it was a huge deal," said Curtis Strange,
whose playoff victory over Tom Kite at Pebble Beach in the 1988 Nabisco
determined the money title and made him golf's first $1 million man.
"It was done to help the fields at the end of the year," he said. "The top
players didn't play any more than they would have. But guys from (Nos.) 25 to 50
did everything in their power to get in it."
The Tour Championship has lost some of its buzz in recent years. Its prize
money, $6.5 million this year, is less than the World Golf Championships ($7.5
million) and not much more than tournaments such as the Wachovia Championship.
Plus, the Tour Championship has not decided player of the year seven out of the
last 10 years.
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