Tour stop sates appetite for PGA

By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist, 9/2/2003

NORTON -- For five years we had a big hole in our local athletic soul.

We had our Super Bowl-winning Patriots, we had our Red Sox, we had our Bruins, we had our Celtics, we had our Revolution, we had our major league baseball All-Star Game, we had our NCAA basketball, we had our ice skating and gymnastics championships, we had our Davis Cup, we had our WUSA championship match, we had a historic Ryder Cup, and I've probably missed a few.

But you can't say you have a complete sports resume unless you have a stop on the PGA Tour, and once the boys stopped showing up at Pleasant Valley after the 1998 event, we in Greater Boston (and you, too, Providence) were out of that key sporting loop.

The region, said Deutsche Bank Americas CEO Seth Waugh, was "golf-starved."

No longer. We just had ourselves the golfing equivalent of a Thanksgiving feast. We just had ourselves a right proper PGA tournament, won by a right proper rising star named Adam Scott. A great wrong has been righted, and now we must make certain it is the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the PGA Tour and the TPC Boston course here in Norton.

It wasn't perfect, but how could it be? "It's unfair to compare this course, this year, to something like, say, Riviera, where they've had a tournament for 70 years," pointed out Brad Faxon, who had a particular reason to endorse this tournament, given that he was shown some serious fan love in his unofficial role as the Home Town Team.

Aside from what the fans did for him personally ("I was overwhelmed and humbled"), Faxon had good reason to support the cause of PGA tournament golf in Greater Boston. The crowd enthusiasm made an impression on all the players. It was not merely a case of Tiger idolatry, although the sight of people 6-10 deep lining the fairway on this fourth day of Tiger-watching was extreme, even by Tiger standards. The morning crowds on both Sunday and Monday blew people away. Also-rans teeing off at 8 o'clock in the morning following the cut were startled to see someone actually watching them do so. Waugh was correct. People here were positively ravenous for the sport.

OK, these guys beat up on the course. It would have been nice if Scott had shot something a bit higher than his 20-under, 69-62-67-66, just for the sake of TPC Boston's pride. I mean, you go and lengthen holes to provide a bit more of a challenge and they still hit 9-irons and wedges in after booming their fearless 320-yard drives. And even when they do manage to find the fairway bunkers, they pull something out of the bag and put it on the green. It's a totally different game.

But guess what? These guys beat up on just about every non-major course they encounter. This was the ninth time (out of 38) this season the winner has gone 20 or more under par, and the 18th time the winner has gone at least 15 under. It's what they do.

Again, we give you Mr. Faxon: "It's a matter of the maturation process for the fairways and greens. The few things that need to be done here are very fixable."

He's biased. Is that what you're saying? Fair enough. Rocco Mediate isn't. He's from Pennsylvania and he lives in Ponte Vedra, Fla. He has no known Massachusetts ties.

"We need a tournament up here somewhere, and it's here; it needs to be here then," mused the tourney runner-up. "It's one of our (i.e. Tournament Players) golf courses, so why not have it here? We need a tournament in the Boston area."

Mediate was skeptical of the course when he first saw it.

"The course took some criticism," he said. "Some of the green sides are a little `interesting,' I guess, is a good word. But as you saw this week, they held up. When I first got here, I'm like, `Oh my God, you can't even play the 14th hole; 500 yards downhill, the green slopes away.' But, all of a sudden, when the tournament starts, you're hitting 7- and 8-irons in there, no big deal."

Noting that there were a few defections from the original tournament field, Mediate had this to say: "So I think the golf course surprised the guys who stayed. A lot of guys left, I guess, on Thursday. I think it surprised everybody. I know I was pleasantly surprised."

It takes a lot to stage a PGA event. You need a course that holds the attention of world-class players. You need a membership willing to forgo playing the course they've spent heavy coin to join for a significant period of time. You need volunteers by the boxcar. You need sponsors, of course. And then there's the stuff that comes out of your head and heart.

"These people did everything you could ask for away from the course," explained Faxon. "It was great that Tiger was here, but in the long run you need to attract a deep field, and they had tickets for Fenway, concert tickets, a tour of Newport, and a day in Boston for the wives. When it comes down to picking a place to play, these kind of things are a big factor."

It all came together for the players and the fans. They got to see Tiger. They saw a representative sampling of the world's great players, including two others from the top 10 in the world rankings (Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk). They got to see some of the great young players, most notably Scott, who has now won in Europe and America before the age of 24, and his great friend Justin Rose.

Anyone who cares about golf was gratified. Anyone who just likes big events had nothing to complain about. And the weather was three-fourths good after early indications that the last three days, and not just Monday, would be dicey.

Only the Deutsche Bank pooh-bahs know what the future of this tournament is, but whatever they decide will not alter the fact that, just as a Greater Boston without a PGA Tour stop is a lesser sporting area, so, too, is a PGA schedule without a Greater Boston stop a diminished enterprise.

For five years our local sports calendar was incomplete. There is no good reason for this to happen again.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.