Tournament number two begins this week–the Sony Open in Honolulu.
It’s January. The NFL is at its peak. The NBA is going strong. And college basketball is preparing its stretch run to March Madness.
Somewhere, lost amidst all of these other sports, is professional golf. How much air time did the Mercedes Benz Championship get on SportsCenter last week? Maybe a minute?
PGA Tour Commish Tim Finchem likes year-round golf. TV ratings show that 99% of Americans disagree. (Image: Both coasts/Flickr)
Tim Finchem’s job is to make the Tour an attractive product. Part of that, I guess, is to get as much airtime as possible, which means to have as many tournaments as possible.
But let’s be honest, the PGA Tour has no chance of ever really being popular in January, February, November and December. To the casual sports fan, there’s simply too many other intriguing events to watch during those months, and golf isn’t one of them.
I think golf has NASCAR syndrome. To clarify, I don’t watch NASCAR, but I do know that its season seems to never end. I swear the season ended like three weeks ago, but I just saw a promo for the Daytona 500. Golf, like NASCAR, has too many official events, too long of a season.
The Tour season should last from March through September. Cut back on some of these crap tournaments that no one watches. Give the season a running start before the Masters in early April, and then about four to five more weeks after the PGA Championship in August. If you need to schedule into mid-October for the sake of the tedious FedEx Cup, then so be it.
But this Tour season is ridiculous. All other sports start with a bang. Opening Day in baseball and football is huge. Even hockey and basketball open with fanfare. Golf starts with whimper and then concludes with a fizzle, thanks to the drudgery of the FedEx Cup and the Tour Championship lately.
No one is watching golf right now. No one. It’s overkill, oversaturation. Too much product, too often. Trim the season back some, Tim Finchem. Why is the NFL so popular? Partly because we only have 5 months a year to enjoy it. So we have to appreciate it while it lasts.
Golf knocks us over the head all year long. Do we really need the silly season of golf in December–all of the meaningless exhibitions broadcast on the networks? Even I need a break from it.
I’m no expert. Shocker there, I know. But I can tell you that professional golf has problems. This is more than just an issue of Tiger being hurt. The PGA Tour needs to adopt my favorite editing mantra: “Less is more.”
Less IS more. Maybe the Tour will figure that out one day.
January 16, 2009 at 12:39 pm
You know good and well that the Sony will be dragging millions of viewers away from the lowly NFL playoffs. I would personally like to see some of the pre-tournament pro-ams on TV as well -these are the really interesting rounds! Joking aside, the mid-range players on tour do appreciate the extra few months of potential earnings – for them, more is more. Other than those guys and the fanatics you’re right on spot.
January 17, 2009 at 6:34 pm
This is such a great question. My suggestion is to keep the same number of tournaments, meaning everyone on tour gets a shot at some earnings. BUT, designate a “regular season” start date. All earnings, FedEx Points, etc. earned from that date through the end of the season (early Sept?) accrue. You then tally by whatever crazy system you want to use, and move one of the majors to the end of the year (personally, I’d like to see the U.S. Open become the championship and moved to September — aside from the Masters, people know and watch it, plus it moves around). You create a threshold of points, money, or whatever you want to use, as your way of determining who gets to play that year. And make it a limited field, so that the competition in the weeks prior actually mean something. With the right threshold, you’ll get the big guys to compete in more tournaments leading up, which drives more fans to tournaments. And oh yeah, since it’s the U.S. Open (or some other major), make the winning purse insanely large, just for added benefit. It might become the “Google U.S. Open”, but you might just enjoy it more knowing Tiger and Anthony Kim were playing their heart out at the chance to not only make $12 million, but to also have the prestige of being THE PGA Tour Champion (Disney World, Wheeties Box to follow).
January 18, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Good points. It would be kind of like the preseason in football or baseball. All the money would still count, so that would help out some of the lower and mid-tier guys like Mike mentioned, but the real deal wouldn’t start until March. I think it would make the season more dramatic. No season opens with less hooplah than golf.
February 15, 2009 at 2:59 pm
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