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NOW ON GOLFWEEKTV: Hate to be Rude: Will MacKenzie
Jeff Rude’s “I Hate To Be Rude” column appears on Golfweek.com on Friday, the same day as his video show of the same name.• Now that the FedEx Cup playoffs are over, it’s time for the PGA Tour’s second and third tiers of golfers to get richer. Remarkably, the purses for the remaining six Fall Series tournaments range from $6 million to $4.1 million. That means the first prizes run from $1.08M to $738,000.
That’s heady stuff, considering the country is in a financial crisis and only five years ago the Masters and U.S. Open had $6 million purses.
This is good work if you can get it, for by and large the fields don’t have to worry about beating the likes of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Camilo Villegas.
They have to beat Robert Allenby and Sean O’Hair. At 33rd and 39th in the world, respectively, they are the highest ranked players in this week’s Turning Stone Resort Championship, where the winner gets more than a cool mil.
• Speaking of big money, the four FedEx Cup playoff events ($28M purses total) and FedEx bonuses ($35M) paid out $63 million down the stretch of the regular season. Considering that, you’d think the players would express heaps of gratitude or, at the least, understand the inner workings.
FedEx champion Vijay Singh, winner of two playoff events and the $10 million bonus, was clearly more focused on his game than the points. “You don’t really understand what’s going on with the points system,” Singh said after clinching. “I mean, once we play the tournament, figure out how many points we got, then you realize, ‘Oh, this is how it works.’ When they started the playoffs this year, I had no idea what the system was going to be.”
FedEx Cup runnerup Camilo Villegas, also winner of two playoff stops and a $3 million bonus, was among the players who didn’t like the added volatility in this year’s playoffs. He dissented to the point that when the FedEx Cup was brought up after his BMW Championship victory, he bristled on the air and in the interview room with, “Do we have to talk about that?”
How about a little more love for the FedEx hand in Memphis that feeds?
• How to fix the FedEx Cup playoffs and ensure drama at the playoff finale? The best plan: Play the Tour Championship on Wednesday-Saturday and award the tournament winner the trophy and $1.26 million check. Then the top four players in FedEx Cup points at that point start from scratch and play 18 holes Sunday for the current mega-bonuses, including $10 million for first.
• A growing number of players seem to question playing ultra-difficult courses on the PGA Tour week after week. To hear them, a U.S. Open breaks out most weeks – with high rough and pins tucked three paces from the edges of greens.
A torture chamber always isn’t necessary to identify the best players. And it certainly isn’t as fun for the fans. Look what happened at the Ryder Cup, where a sensible setup allowed the world’s best golfers a chance to play. The result: We saw their skills shine and we saw drama.
Case-in-point: The Masters isn’t as much fun as it used to be.
• Speaking of the Ryder, Cowboy Boo Weekley rides again.
Weekley, whose play and enthusiasm helped the U.S. win the Ryder Cup, expanded his Q rating during a Thursday night appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He came onto the set riding an imaginary wild horse, as he did coming off the first tee at Valhalla.
In case you missed the show, Leno said Weekley’s arm-raising motions to stir up crowds looked “like (John) McCain telling kids to get off the lawn.” The host called Weekley “my kind of golfer” and poked fun at his bulging belly. It followed that when Leno asked if he was a natural athlete, Weekley cracked, “I’m a natural eater.”
Other Booisms:
– On running into Gary Player this week and learning he does 1,000 to 1,500 pushups a day: “That guy’s crazy.”
– To Dennis Miller’s inquiry on whether he’d rather play for his country or the South: “I ain’t answering that. I’m pleading the fifth.”
– On winning the Ryder Cup without Tiger Woods: “We proved to the golf world that we don’t need to have Tiger at every event for it to be a helluva event.”
– On inventing the world “capatabate” (read: being capatible) at the Ryder: “It’s kinda like we jellin’ with some felons.”
• Tiger Woods said this week he won’t start practicing until January. That’s typical fare, for experts say it usually takes patients at least six months to heal after ACL replacement. Woods also cited a statistic that the ACL will be 85 percent in strength then and not 100 percent until two years after the surgery.
Well, Woods has demonstrated that he does just fine on a golf course when at 85 percent or less. As his coach, Hank Haney said, “He won 10 of his last 13 tournaments (worldwide) with two seconds and a fifth with no ACL and won the U.S. Open with a broken leg.”
In other words, 85 percent might be an upgrade. Another scary thought regarding Woods.
• John Daly, maker of just five of 16 cuts this year, says he might play the 2009 European Tour. The good news is that Daly, 42, says he still has the itch to play and that he’s healing all right after summer rib surgery.
“Now I feel like it’s all starting to come together,” he said.
If he’s serious about his game and shows it, Tour events should give the non-exempt Daly sponsor exemptions now that he’s healthy. That said, he has run out of room to screw up. Some people call that double probation.
• One more time: Woods over Padraig Harrington as PGA Tour Player of the Year. No brainer. Why? His broken-leg mind-blower of a victory at the U.S. Open aside, he has three more victories than Harrington.
• Bad time to bring this up, after the Ryder Cup and all, but where have the Americans gone? International players have won nine of the last 12 Tour events, including all four FedEx Cup playoff tournaments.
But, hey, it’s nice having that little exhibition trophy around for the first time since last millennium.
Posted: 10/3/2008
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