When the PGA Tour decided to rewrite the calendar and make their season a “wrap-around” season that encompassed two calendar years I, like many protested.
The Fall Series, the tournaments after the FedEx Cup Playoffs and before the Tournament of Champions in January had been a kind of mini-tour school. The big name players rarely played them, full FedEx Cup points were not awarded to the winner and the winner’s paycheck never approached a million dollars. This allowed the fields to be full of names still trying to make it on tour.
But Tim Finchem gave into pressure from the Fall Series sponsors as they were paying big bucks for a watered down version of a tour event. Those sponsors never saw Tiger or Phil or really any big name that would ever impact ticket sales. So Finchem and crew went to work and reconfigured the calendar and the tour schedule. Now, the PGA Tour season starts in October and continues all the way through the winter, spring and summer ending at the Tour Championship in September. The old Fall Series events are now awarded full FedEx Cup points and the paychecks are comparable to “regular” season events.
Lost was the sense that the rookies and B-list players who normally made up the bulk of these events would be able to make their bones at places like the Frys and The Shriners. Or maybe not.
The tour has used these events to trade with big name players that wish to play elsewhere in the world while a PGA Tour event is scheduled. Rory McIlroy didn’t play at the Frys.com because he wanted to boost ticket sales for the tournament. He was forced to do so by the tour because he was granted permission to play in a non-PGA Tour event during the season a few years back.
And as we can see by the fields in the first two events of the 2015-16 season plenty of players are staying home and decompressing after a very full year of golf and leaving the start of the year (the Fall Series) to the newbies, rookies and B-listers. And that’s a good thing.
Last year Sang Moon Bae and Ben Martin, two relative unknown golfers won the Frys and The Shriners. This year it is rookies Emiliano Grillo and Smylie Kaufman that took the opening events.
Yes, there were some “big names” in the field with Rory at the Frys, Rickie Fowler, Jason Dufner, Keegan Bradley, Jimmy Walker and Angel Cabrera at The Shriners but essentially the fields were made up of golfers trying to make their name or earn a better spot on tour.
For my money this is what these events should be: a place for the new blood the earn their way into the big time and refine their game so that when the tour hits it stride, next year they already have some dollars in the bank and a few finishes on their resumes.
For Finchem and the tour it is all about giving their members a place to play all year for good money and this certainly does that. But it looks like the old “Fall Series” events may have been changed in name only.
The fields are still filled with up and comers and with guys like Smylie and Grillo taking home the wins so far this year the “start” of the season is proving to be a place where youngsters can jump start their careers.
And for me that’s exactly what it should be.
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