It was way, way back in 1967 that the Western Open, a professional golf tournament first played back in 1899, returned to my neighborhood course, Beverly Country Club, on the south side of Chicago. It was the first summer that I worked at the Donald Ross-designed course as a caddie. The older and more experienced caddies looped for the tour pros that week. The rest of us had other avenues to make $5 per day.
Inexperienced caddies like myself, known in the caddie vernacular as “birds,” picked up side jobs such as selling programs, working as forecaddies, or, in my case, doing duty as a sign boy. Regardless of my very minor role during the ”67 Western, I was able to walk anywhere I wanted that week, the result of my all-access pass. On one of my journeys through Beverly”s stately clubhouse overlooking the 18th green, I observed a table with a bank of phones and some distinguished-looking people hard at work. The sign on the table said, “Tournament Players Division of the PGA of America.”
Through 1968, the tour as we know it was a haphazard traveling circus under the umbrella of the PGA of America, the organization that nowadays represents America”s club professionals. In its earlier days, club pros would work at established clubs and venture out on tour during their offseason. Ben Hogan was the pro at the Seminole Club, Byron Nelson was at Hershey Country Club, and on and on.
It was a far different world for the tour by the 1960s, with the advent of television coupled with the dynamic rivalry between Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Professionals no longer needed to hold a job at an exclusive country club and the tour had grown into a 40-week routine. There was no real connection between the guy who gave lessons at Goat Hills Muni and a globetrotting major champion like Gary Player.
Led by Palmer and Nicklaus, the touring pros broke away from the PGA of America at the end of 1968 and inserted Joseph Dey Jr. as their first commissioner. Dey, the retired administrator of the USGA, held down the position for six years until the tour promoted one of its own from within for the top spot, namely Deane Beman. A four-time winner on tour who was also a past U.S. Amateur champion (Nicklaus won the 1959 and 1961 Amateurs while Beman won in 1960) and British Amateur champion, he also was a business major who was making more side money as an insurance agency executive than he was as a successful pro golfer when he took the helm in 1974.
While the product provided the PGA Tour during the Dey-Beman era was certainly a quality one, the tour didn”t hold all the cards. Its four major championships were controlled by outside entities. The Masters was run by a golf club, Augusta National; the U.S. Open was a USGA event; the British Open was run by a golfing society, the Royal and Ancient; and the PGA of American hosted the PGA Championship as well as the biennial Ryder Cup matches. The Masters, the youngest of these events, was a mere 54 years older than the PGA Tour.
In 1974, the world of professional golf had four versions of the Super bowl and yet had control over none of these events. Dey inaugurated the so-called “fifth major,” the Players Championship. Beman began marketing the tour through television rights, merchandising, and TPC courses. Yet when all was said and done, the PGA Tour had zero control over golf”s crown jewels, the tourneys people most noticed. It would be like the NCAA putting on the Super Bowl outside the auspices of the NFL.
Beman retired after 20 years as commissioner. His successor, Tim Finchem, has tried to make his mark since 1994. Finchem outmaneuvered Greg Norman in initiating the World Golf Championships. During his tenure, tournament purses and television exposure have exploded, thanks in large part to the advent of the Tiger Woods era. Still, Finchem wanted the PGA Tour to expand its sphere of influence in the world of golf.
Finchem”s most recent project has been the development of the Fed Ex Cup, a yearlong points race that leads to a four-week playoff system in major U.S. markets, namely New York, Boston, Chicago and Atlanta. A takeoff on NASCAR”s Nextel Cup Series, the inaugural year of the Fed Ex Cup playoff format has had more than a few hiccups of late.
During the week-one playoff round at New York”s Westchester Country Club, Tiger Woods took the tournament off, citing exhaustion following his back-to-back wins at Akron and the PGA Championship. Ernie Els withdrew from week two at Boston as did K.J. Choi. Now we”re in the midst of week three at Cog Hill in Chicago and last week”s champion as well as the Fed Ex Cup leader, Phil Mickelson, is taking a pass. If only the Dallas Mavericks could have taken off the first round of the playoffs against Golden State last spring, maybe their run to the NBA title would have had a different ending.
To accommodate Fed Ex Cup scheduling, longtime tourneys of note have been eliminated, including the Western, the Booz Allen, the B.C. Open, the 84 Lumber, and the International. PGA Tour members are upset they weren”t included in the decision-making process, most notably the concept that the Fed Ex Cup winner doesn”t see the $10 million first-place prize until he reaches retirement age. On top of that, the schedule is a big-time issue with the World Golf Championship in Akron, the PGA Championship, the four Fed Ex Cup tournaments, and the Ryder Cup, a total of seven important golfing events all played within the confines of an eight-week period. Tiger Woods seldom plays more than two tournament weeks in a row, and after reaching victory lane at Akron and Tulsa, something had to give.
In the end, the PGA Champion-ship win was far more important to Tiger than accumulating Fed Ex Cup points. He doesn”t cherish the $10 million as much as he wants to accumulate major titles. Even after skipping the first round in New York, he”s still in position to win now that the No. 1 man in Fed Ex points, Phil Mickelson, is taking the week off. How many sports fans will do the same this weekend and watch college football and the NFL instead of the third week of the golf playoffs?
