And now, the Tour Championship ... yawn
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As the excitement over the U.S. victory in the Ryder Cup fades into the Kentucky hills, we now move on to the PGA Tour’s grand finale: the Tour Championship. It’s the end of the tour’s regular season, with the top 30 FedEx Cup point earners in the field, $10 million on the line to the FedEx champion, the culmination of a playoff system designed to send the golf season out with a bang.
More like a thud. The golf season would have ended beautifully with the Ryder Cup, because the Tour Championship has no chance to match -- or even approach -- the intensity on display at Valhalla. The $10-million bonus? Already won by Vijay Singh, assuming he can remain standing for four rounds at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. He wrapped that up with victories in the Barclays and the Deutsche Bank Championship, the first of the four playoff events.
The race for the FedEx Cup, of course, is a fabricated format to try to drum up interest at the end of the year. It’s a bust. I believed from the start that there wasn’t going to be much additional interest generated by watching 30 millionaires try to add a $10-million bonus to their portfolios. And even that drama is again gone.
The Ryder Cup was a huge success despite Tiger Woods’ absence, but when you toss nationalism into the equation, put the U.S. in the underdog role and then watch players like Boo Weekley and Anthony Kim become superstars for a week, you’ve got a winning formula.
Whether that will last without Woods is another question. Mark Whicker, in a column in today’s Orange County Register, believes golf is surviving quite well without Tiger. It’s a good point, and Kim in particular might turn out to be one of those singular golfers that people will tune in to watch whenever he plays.
But that hasn’t happened yet, and though the Tour Championship might benefit from some spillover interest from a riveting Ryder Cup, don’t expect the TV ratings to approach anything near the level of a major or other significant event with Woods in contention.
--Mike James
