It's a winning formula
All this playoff system needs is a few tweaks
Something tells me that 41 years ago when the owners of 24 professional football teams - 15 in the NFL, nine in the AFL - sat down to discuss a playoff game between their respective champions, total harmony did not exist. Chances are pretty good the majority of those owners couldn't agree what day it was.
They were laying the foundation to what would become the Super Bowl, but that's not what those pro football owners organized for Jan. 15, 1967. Instead, they had the first AFL-NFL World Championship in front of 61,946 people and a lot of empty seats at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. It was a game dominated by the mighty Green Bay Packers and cloaked in skepticism.
Certainly, there were plenty of voices inside the football world who would have done away with the game after that one time, but there was more support for patience and a commitment to a vision. The latter group has been validated by what is America's biggest sporting event, though the alterations to the NFL landscape and playoff system over 40 years have a lot to do with that.
None of this is to suggest that the inaugural PGA Tour playoffs will one day rival the Super Bowl. That's sheer nonsense.
But as we prepare for today's start to the last of the four playoff events, the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, let's give credit to PGA Tour officials. Their concept has been a success, because the last three weeks - the Barclays in New York, the
There has been a clamoring for a Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson head-to-head meeting in the final round, and that took place at the Deutsche Bank Championship. And it lived up to all the hype. People have wanted someone to step up and challenge Woods down the stretch, and not only did Mickelson do it, but the very next week at the BMW, Aaron Baddeley and Steve Stricker did, too. And to set the whole playoffs in motion, we had Stricker's heartwarming comeback completion at the Barclays.
Three weeks, three terrific tournaments - it's what the PGA Tour envisioned with a field jam-packed with the best players.
Even players who are known to rock the boat a bit concede as much.
"I think it's been a successful start and I think it'll get better as time goes on," said Mickelson, who has strong views on just how it could get better. Just don't ask him how.
"I don't want to go into it publicly," said Mickelson. "It doesn't do any good to talk about it publicly."
Yet he did just that in the moments after he won that riveting Deutsche Bank Championship against Woods. The lefthander almost immediately said he had doubts about going to Chicago, that there had been some things he and other players had asked for within the parameters of the
All are in attendance at East Lake, however, for what the PGA Tour hopes will be a stirring finish to its playoff series, and that Woods and Mickelson, the two best players in the world, and Stricker, probably the most consistent PGA Tour performer not named Woods, are in great position to win validates the series.
Which isn't to say it can't be improved. It can - and it will. Just a few suggestions:
1. They want cash, give the players cash.
Even a company man such as Brad Faxon isn't sold on the deferred payment idea.
"I think it would be really cool if they had a wheelbarrow filled with 10 million $1 bills," said Faxon.
Like many of his colleagues, Faxon doesn't think a $10 million top prize that comes in the form of an annuity resonates with the public. For his part, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has indicated that this is an easy fix. He's OK with cash, too.
2. The points system has to be tweaked so that there is more movement. Of the top 30 players in the FedEx Cup standings when the playoffs began, 27 of them reached East Lake.
3. The Tour Championship - the PGA Tour's "Super Bowl," so to speak - has to be moved around to give it a special feeling. East Lake is as solid as they come, no argument there. But there are plenty of other venues that would offer a similar experience.
4. To get the players to totally embrace this playoff concept, the PGA Tour has to be willing to give up something on its end. Enter the need to relax the schedule at both ends of the playoffs. "It's not the four straight," Woods said. "It's seven [tournaments] in nine [weeks]." Seven tournaments in nine weeks. Even PGA Tour officials have to concede that's an excessive request. People can focus all they want on Woods missing Barclays, or Els bypassing Boston, or Mickelson skipping Chicago, but the bottom line is this - when all is said and done, each of them will have been in attendance for six of the seven big tournaments since Aug. 1 and three of the four playoff events.
"I don't think that's bad at all," said Mickelson.
Nor do I, though if the Tour doesn't throw something the players' way, one can envision it not being like that in years to come.
Tracking the great unknown
Can't sleep? Then consider this your lucky weekend, because The Golf Channel has come to the rescue. It will broadcast live from Sweden as the Solheim Cup is played out for the 10th time.The Americans have a 6-3 edge over their European competitors, but they also have history working against them. That's because a visiting team has won the match-play tournament just once, in 1996 when the US team prevailed in Wales, 17-11. The other trips across the pond (to Scotland in 1992 and 2000, and to Sweden in 2003) proved less than favorable.
Trying to successfully defend the Cup for the first time since that dramatic win in Wales, captain Betsy King took over a 12-member American team dominated by youngsters (Morgan Pressel, 19; Paula Creamer, 21; Brittany Lincicome, turns 22 Wednesday; Natalie Gulbis, 24) as only four players (Juli Inkster, Sherri Steinhauer, Pat Hurst, and Laura Diaz) are over 30.
Pressel and Lincicome will be making their Solheim debuts, as will Stacy Prammanasudh, 28, and Nicole Castrale, 28.
So European captain Helen Alfredsson clearly fields a more experienced team - her players combine for 40 Solheim Cups, as opposed to the Americans' 22 - but the track record of this competition, much like the men's Ryder Cup, tells us that none of this means much.
What makes the Solheim Cup special is in a strange way what the Ryder Cup has lost: The air of mystery. Face it, when the American men take on the Europeans, it looks like any one of a dozen marquee events held during the season. The competition is still very good, but gone is the suspense of just what sort of game these lads from the United Kingdom and Spain and Denmark and Germany have.
The Solheim Cup still has that, because Alfredsson will send out five players who are European stalwarts and rarely play in the United States - Becky Brewerton of Wales, Bettina Hauert of Germany, Gwladys Nocera of France, Linda Wessberg of Sweden, and Iben Tinning of Denmark.
That global aspect surely adds flavor; it is, after all, an international event, complete with the many time zones in between. Not easy, but it can be negotiated, thanks to The Golf Channel.
Coverage will be shown live tomorrow from 2 a.m. to noon, ditto for Saturday, and Sunday's singles will be starting at 3 a.m.
Trophy proves Lewis made a splash
Talk about your slow play, the first round of the LPGA Tour's NW Arkansas Championship last weekend was one for the books.The women started Friday, but didn't complete the opening 18 holes until early Sunday morning. By that time, remnants of a two-day tropical storm that pounded the Rogers, Ark., area were long gone and the sun was shining - only the damage had been done to Pinnacle CC.
There would be no more golf. The inaugural tournament was halted at 18 holes, so officially, there was no tournament.
"We have to finish 36 holes to have an official LPGA Tour event," said Doug Brecht, the tour's vice president of rules and officials. "We just don't consider it an event at all."
Of course, try telling that to University of Arkansas senior Stacy Lewis, whose bogey-free round of 7-under 65 had put her into a one-shot lead. When the rain subsided and the course condition had been deemed unplayable, tournament officials looked at the trophy they had sitting around and figured, "Why not?" So they handed it to Lewis.
"We wrestled with what to do," said Andy Bush, the tournament director. "It was in everyone's best interest to have some sort of informal kind of conclusion."
Lewis appreciated the offer and graciously accepted the hardware, but with no pretenses.
"It's one good round of golf and that's all you can really take from it," said Lewis, who as an amateur wasn't in line to receive any cash, anyway.
That's something her LPGA Tour competitors weren't saying, but Brecht confirmed that some payment would be offered to those who played, "but that will not be made public," he said.
Etc.
Strength in numbersThere are many ways to dissect Tiger Woods's brilliance, and numbers are one way to get to the heart of his greatness. He leads the PGA Tour in scoring average (67.93), but look more closely. He is at 69.86 before the cut is made, goes to 69.07 in Round 3, and is 69.00 in the final round. In other words, he actually gets better as the pressure mounts and the course is presumably at its toughest. Woods's playoff numbers are similar. At the
Playoff payoff
Steve Stricker's playoff run has been impressive - a win, a T-9, and a third. How big a turnaround has he made in his career? Consider that for those three playoff events, Stricker has earned $1,915,000, whereas he made just $989,136 in 69 PGA Tour events in 2003-05.
Janangelo enjoys bright Futures
Liz Janangelo of West Hartford, Conn., fell short in her bid to earn an automatic LPGA Tour card for 2008 when she finished sixth on the Futures Tour money list. The top five are exempt for next year, but Janangelo, the former Duke standout, was $3,409 behind No. 5. She did, however, get a pass through the first stage of the LPGA qualifying tournament, so Janangelo can point to the final, Nov. 28-Dec. 2.
As if it weren't tough enough . . .
Those leaves you see falling? It can only mean that the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is around the corner. As if there isn't enough of a challenge with the three traditional stages, a new twist in the process has added a prequalifier, which is where a number of local entrants will find themselves. At Cypresswood GC in Spring, Texas, the field next Tuesday will include Tim Acquaviva of Andover and Michael Welch of Quincy, while Russ Lipinski of Amherst, N.H., will tee it up at St. John's CC in St. Augustine, Fla. The following week, Jim Renner of Plainville, Kevin Silva of New Bedford, and Justin Goodhue of Glastonbury, Conn., will be among those playing in McKinney, Texas. Jay Haas Jr. is another familiar name among those who'll be involved in prequalifiers.
One to forget
Peter Teravainen, the onetime Mass. Amateur runner-up and Yale All-American from Duxbury, had a wild ride in posting his best finish - a tie for seventh - on the senior circuit in Europe. Teravainen had a whopping 17 birdies and an eagle in the PGA Senior Championship in Suffolk, England, but his grand work was hurt by one miserable hole - he made a 9 at the par-4 10th in Round 2. He finished 10 shots behind Carl Mason, who won for the fourth time this season.
Aiming for the top prize
As the Nationwide Tour boils down to its final seven tournaments, the money list offers encouraging news to Rhode Islander Patrick Sheehan. Though he hasn't won, Sheehan has parlayed two runner-up finishes and six top-10 finishes into $221,146 to sit No. 8, so he's sure to regain his PGA Tour card in 2008 for being within the top 25. James Driscoll of Brookline is in decent shape, too, sitting 19th with $173,575. His ride has been far more turbulent, because a second-place finish is easily overshadowed by missed cuts in three of his last four starts and four of his last eight.
Competition as a matter of course
They went head to head in Boston, now it's on to North Carolina. Woods vs. Phil Mickelson in golf - and golf course design, too. Not really, of course, but it's interesting to take note that a month after Woods was announced as the architect of record on a project in Asheville, N.C., Mickelson revealed that he'll design River Rock GC in Cashiers in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just 75 minutes away. A press release about River Rock announced that the second hole would be a 305-yard par 3. The good news is, it's all downhill.
Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com. Material from personal interviews, wire services, and other beat writers was used in this report. 