The rift between the various PGA Tours and the players

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:19 pm

The PGA Tour in USA is considered the top Tour in the world and many professional golfers dream about being part of it. The PGA Tour offers huge prize money, outstanding golf courses, lavish facilities for the players and fans, and excellent competition for the players. The European PGA Tour offers many of these benefits, and some golfers like to play on both the Tours. It is not easy to have a family and home in Europe and play in USA for the entire season, year after year.

The PGA Tour requires its members to play a minimum of 15 PGA tournaments in a year but there is talk about raising the number to twenty PGA tournaments. There are some players like Ernie Els who want to play all over the world but it does not sit well with the PGA Tour leadership. Is it fair for the PGA Tour to ask its members to play only on the PGA Tour or to seek permission before the players can play on another Tour?

Should the PGA Tour promote golf within USA or should it go global? The NBA is trying to reach new markets all over the world whereas the PGA Tour appears to be limiting its influence to USA. Is it advantageous to the PGA Tour when its stars like Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods and others play all over the world?

What do the golf forum members think about the state of affairs in professional golf?

Kumar · Post by **Kumar** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:02 am

Bhushan I can see where PGA is going with this rule.. This is more like a 'ELS' rule. They want the world's number 2 player to play more here... The lot of sponsors maydrop out, pointing out that no.2 player is not participating.. So they want to protect their tour and turf. ..

But the question is 15 tournaments is quite a lot of tournaments for a top player.. almost 50% of the tournament , he participates ...

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:37 am

Kumar,

I agree that Els was singled out by the PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and he now seems to be backing out after the European PGA Tour stepped in to side with Els.

It is important for the PGA Tour to get its top golfers to play in lots of tournaments. Els is a big draw for the fans and the sponsors but Tiger is the biggest draw at any PGA tournament.

My complaint about Mr Tim Finchem is the double standard that he is applying. Here is a side by side comparison of the number of US PGA tournaments played by Ernie Els and Tiger Woods:

Year -- Ernie Els -- Tiger Woods
2004 -- 15 so far -- 18 so far
2003 -- 17 -- 18
2002 -- 18 -- 18
2001 -- 19 -- 19
2000 -- 20 -- 20
1999 -- 18 -- 21
1998 -- 15 -- 20
1997 -- 19 -- 21
1996 -- 18 -- 11 (rookie year)

I am waiting for Mr. Tim Finchem to publically rebuke Tiger Woods for not playing as many tournaments as Vijay Singh.

jaydeep · Post by **jaydeep** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:31 pm

Superb statistic Bhushan ... Mr. Tim Finchem definetly gunning for Ernie ... I agree he is not as much famous as Tiger in US, but then he can also pull crowd by his name all over the world ... Then Ernie is around Top 5 for last few years, so his importance is also increase ... But then Golf is global game and all these top players should go all over world to market it ... Like Vijay is coming to India ... So people start to attract this sport ... Mr. Tim Finchem move is wrong, its only in view of profitability of PGA Tour ... This is sad thing.

Jaydeep.

kujo · Post by **kujo** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 6:48 pm

PGA tour protects its grip over players and sponsors as best as any organisation can **and** will do in order to compete in market place.

After all, PGA tour went to court against the journalists from reporting the golf scores live! Instead, they are supposed to get their scores only through PGA and not directly from the correspondents on the field, etc.
Which makes sense, since PGA does not want to loose money there....

But not all of their actions are justified.
It is downright silly not to have P. Harrington's stats in the PGA tour web site, just because he is not a tour member officially. He is currently ranked no:8 in the world! He is in with a chance to upset the money list and you don't even list him anywhere on the tour web site?? come on....
(I got scott harrington when I searched for padraig!!)

To promote golf worldwide (which is definitely a bigger market in the long run), the PGA tour has to get rid of its' protective nature and do some stuff for the general good of golf (even if they loose money a bit in the short term)...

- kujo

suresh · Post by **suresh** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:37 am

It (the PGA commisioner's reaction) could also be a knee-jerk reaction to having lost
the Ryder cup again (I know Els does not play the Ryder cup). There is one small
solution that is more amicable -- get the PGA tour to recognise more events on the
European PGA tour as a part of the US PGA tour and vice versa. It doesn't have to
happen only during majors. Maybe, two/three weeks prior to the British open,
European PGA events should be recognised as joint events. That way, US PGA
players can play in the European PGA for a whole month. I don't know how much
of this is already happening.

Kumar · Post by **Kumar** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:25 am

Interesting stats.. Tiger played just 18 tournaments.. May be Mr.Finchem is actually targeting Tiger .rather than Els??

Think about it.. Nobody in Golf World has guts to come out and say, Tiger you gotta to play more tournaments. Now if they raise the Ceiling to 20 .. This will force Tiger to play more tournaments too..

Isn't that killing two birds with one stone..

jaydeep · Post by **jaydeep** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 4:46 am

Ha ha .. good point Kumar ... May be they trying to kill as many as birds possible in single throw ... But why they r behaving step fatherly towards Padraig Harrington

He is Top 10 rank player in the world .. And his inclusion will increase more spice in PGA tour ... They r trying get hold on Professional Golfing world withthis move ... This is bad in point of globolisation of the game.

Jaydeep.

PS. And they r planning to bring golf to Olympic, how such moves going to help them to achive this???