The PGA Tour’s 2016-17 wraparound season came to its conclusion Sunday in Atlanta. My thought is that during the next four weeks I could pen articles about golfer of the year Justin Thomas, write about the newest group of tour stars such as Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, and wonder what ever happened to the careers of Hunter Mahan, Colt Knost, Stuart Appleby and the like. There’s also a new graduating class from the Web.com Tour.
Yet in reality there is no way that is going to happen. There is absolutely zero chance of looking back at the last season on the PGA Tour while preparing to think about the coming year for one obvious reason. The new 2017-18 season begins this coming Thursday with the playing of the Safeway Open at Silverado Resort in Napa. There truly is no such thing as an offseason in professional golf anymore, and when the tour does ultimately take some time off prior to Christmas, golfers of note will rush off to play in Australia and South Africa.
Meanwhile, with the one week off between seasons, the top 12 American golfers are playing against the top 12 International golfers this weekend in the 12th edition of the Presidents Cup matches at the Liberty National Golf Club in New Jersey. With golfers such as Phil Mickelson currently playing at Liberty National and then preparing to get to the West Coast for his tee time next Thursday, there is really no such thing as an extended offseason break from pro golf.
Prior to the commencement of the Fed Ex Cup playoff series some 10 years ago in 2007, professional golf had a January through October calendar that was initially formulated at the conclusion of World War I. The tournament professionals started their season in January and worked their way through California, Arizona and then Florida. From there, the circuit be-bopped through Texas, the Southeast, the East Coast and the Midwest, with the final event of the year normally concluding around Halloween. This is basically the way things were done from 1920 through 2006.
Yet while corporate support and television money have been the machinery driving the PGA Tour during the modern era, the excess of available money was making the PGA Tour a two-tiered circuit. The biggest of the big names often skipped the West Coast swing. Greg Norman hardly ever started his season in California. He’d initially tee it up in Florida in March at Doral. For others, when the final putt dropped at the PGA Championship in mid-August, their version of the golf season was over. The Fall Finish tourneys in the Quad Cities, Milwaukee, Las Vegas and other sites had weaker fields, limited television during the heart of the college and pro football season, and minimal public interest. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, both of whom grew up in California, would play early in the year but seldom teed it up in an event after Labor Day. On occasion Tiger and Phil even went so far as to take a pass when it came to participating in the season-ending, big-money Tour Championship. It was no longer the days of San Snead, Byron Nelson and Arnold Palmer, all of whom entered more than 30 tourneys annually during their formative years on the PGA Tour. Norman, Nick Price, Tiger and Phil were making a fortune and historically entered just 15-18 tournaments annually.
The PGA Tour had several problems with this two-tiered system. The tour needed its stars to play as often as possible to build up the gate and the television ratings. People were more likely to go to the Buick Classic if Tiger was entered and would turn on the television during the weekend if he was on the leader board. Yet from the player’s perspective, golfers such as Tiger and Phil were making millions of dollars in endorsements and focusing on major wins.
This series of scenarios led to the formation of the playoff series. The big boys would show a willingness to play the year out because the money was too good, the television ratings were solid with all of the top linksters in the field, and the bonus pool was way too generous with a hefty $10 million going to the eventual winner of the season-long Fed Ex Cup series.
One of the results of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs was that every tournament had meaning. Suddenly the October tournament in Sea Island, Georgia was giving away just as many Fed Ex Cup points as the Honda Classic in March and the Memphis Open in June. It didn’t really matter when or where you won because there was an equal nature to victory. You’d get a $1 million-plus payout, you’d get a bunch of Fed Ex Cup points, and you’d get all those invites to the Tournament of Champions, the Masters and other big-time invitational tourneys.
Along the way, the PGA Tour learned that you could host one of its 49 annual tourneys and the golfing public would want to see the game’s top pros in their neck of the woods. Sure, the Los Angeles Open and the San Diego Open would always have sellout crowds, and yet the minor market tourneys in places like Reno or Sea Island would also start to get record-setting crowds. The new breed of 20-somethings were fun to watch, guys such as Phil Mickelson would raise interest in a place such as Napa, and the enthusiasm for the tour was growing. True, the majors and the World Golf tournaments put more money in one’s bank account, but now all tournaments were of equal value when it came to recognition and fame.
The powers that be still have a handful of changes in the works. With the popularity of Olympic golf, there still needs to be scheduling adjustments such as moving the Players Championship back to March and the PGA Championship from August to May. There are still major cities such as Philadelphia and Cincinnati that would like to host PGA Tour events on an annual basis. With stars such as Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy, the future of the game is in good hands. They are not alone with a whole world of guys named Xander and Patrick and Smiley and Emiliano ready to join them atop major championship leader boards. With all this excitement about the current state of the game, there is absolutely no incentive for there to be an offseason for pro golf
They’re playing the Presidents Cup this weekend and then a new season starts all over again on Thursday in Napa. Men’s professional golf is most entertaining and the money just so happens to be very, very good.
