As a lover of the second-oldest Tour event, and one that was considered a 'Major' for many, many years, I was upset and saddened to see the name 'Western Open' be taken away and replaced this season by the PGA Tour.
Not only has my home course hosted four Western Opens through the years, but the list of the Champions at Beverly is very impressive - Chick Evans, Arnold Palmer (in a Monday, 18-hole playoff victory over Jack Nicklaus and Julius Boros), Jack Nicklaus and, ahem, Hugh Royer.
Also, I was fortunate enough to caddy in the 1982 Western Open at Butler. My guy (Curtis Worley) missed the cut, but being able to walk 'inside the ropes' was an unforgettable experience.
Now the Western name is gone, and professional golf will only be in Chicago (the third-largest market) every 3 years. This is sad.
Here's more from GCA-contributor, Tim Cronin in today's Daily Southtown:
PGA'S PLAYOFF IDEA SHOULD BE SHIPPED TO A TRASH BIN
September 6, 2007
For eight months, the PGA Tour publicity machine touted the coming of the FedEx Cup playoffs as the greatest invention for golf since the metal wood.
It was said everyone would play in all the playoff rounds for which they were eligible. It was touted everyone was champing at the bit to tee it up in a series that would rival the majors.
It was a can't-miss proposition.
Instead, it's a can-miss reality. Tiger Woods missed the first week of the playoffs. Ernie Els missed the second week of the playoffs. Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington are missing the third week of the playoffs, which is this week at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club.
How do you like it so far, Federal Express executives? Is the Tour delivering on the multimillion-dollar investment?
The FedEx Cup has holes in it, not the least of which is the concept that Chicagoans will take a day off to watch golf after Labor Day. Woods, who has seen a gallery or two in his time, even in a pro-am at 7 in the morning, had a word for the lack of a throng following him around Dubsdread beginning at that hour Wednesday: "Quiet."
That's because everyone from the age of 6 to 18 who might have been here scrambling for an autograph was in school instead, learning how to conjugate verbs rather than control wedge shots.
"Today was a pretty light day," Woods said of his audience after scoring 4-under-par 67. "Hopefully, this event will be like it normally is here in July. Hopefully, we'll have the same kind of atmosphere and everybody will get fired up about it."
The Western Open is masquerading as the BMW Championship this week, and from the looks of Cog Hill, Lemont might as well be in the Alps. There's so much Euro-style decoration -- which is to say the bland leading the bland -- one half-expects to hear the von Trapp family singing "Edelweiss" come Sunday afternoon on the 18th green.
There's $7 million available this week, which has enticed 66 of the 70 eligible players to happen by. There's $35 million in deferred bonus compensation for the playoff participants, which numbered 144 at the start even though the money is split 150 ways.
The winner gets $10 million credited tax-free, and growing, to his PGA Tour piggy bank and can't touch it until he's 45 or older, depending on when he retires.
Golfers retire? To what?
The players can't understand the pay scheme. The public can't understand how it's a playoff if you can skip a week. This week must be the wild-card weekend to Mickelson, who skipped town after schmoozing Bearing Point customers -- that's the name on his visor, for which he gets a bundle -- Tuesday at Medinah.
Pro golfers pick up millions with monotonous regularity, so it isn't the payout that fans have a problem with. It's the idea that an ill-conceived points system had the points reset before the playoffs, wiping out Woods' 11,445-point lead achieved during the "regular season" and trimming it to a mere thousand points.
NASCAR-style.
Is it smart for professional golf, which has been around for more than a century, to try to emulate an auto racing series that only in the last decade caught the fancy of a slice of the public and has suffered from declining television ratings the last two years?
It must be, because that's what Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and his battalion of vice presidents have done.
It isn't working. Never mind what TV foofs such as Jim Nantz and Dan Hicks say. Nobody talks about this outside of golf tournament press rooms. The first playoff tournament was drubbed in the television ratings by the Little League World Series. Last week's ended this week, and while the ratings went up to a 4.0 overnight for NBC's Monday broadcast, that utopia ends Sunday. At 3:15 p.m., will you be watching the Bears or a Tiger on television? Will you watch next week's Tour Championship from Atlanta at all?
And next year, when the Western Open is played at Bellerive Country Club outside of St. Louis, will you care at all?
The FedEx Cup, for however long it lasts -- Federal Express has to have an out clause in its six-year contract, should the concept not deliver -- will not be the be-all and end-all to the public that Finchem and Co. want it to be.
Four in a row doesn't work if the stars don't play, and aren't made to play, all four. (How about cumulative score, but miss the cut and you're out of the overall Cup? Low 16-round score wins. It's simple, and it connects the dots that now sit separately in New York, Boston, Chicago and Atlanta.)
Chicago, as an average four-day attendance of 150,220 over the last decade proves, holds the Western Open dear to its golfing bosom and will continue to if given the opportunity. Corporate sales were great this year and ticket sales are said to be up 15 percent, but what happens in September of 2009, after the field trip to Bellerive?
In large measure, people pay attention to golf four weeks a year. The Masters is springtime in paradise. The U.S. Open is pros fighting for par. The British Open is a return to the roots of the game. The PGA is the big finish. Throw in the Ryder Cup every other year, and that's it across the country. It's also that way with the players. Maybe this works with a 13-month year, but otherwise, is there a place on the calendar for it?
"There really isn't," Woods said. "If the schedule is this short, there really isn't."
If Woods isn't on board, the FedEx Cup is left unclaimed on the loading dock. Mark it "damaged goods."
Tim Cronin can be reached at
tcronin@dailysouthtown.com
or (708) 633-5948.