PGA Tour: Three Weeks Off: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).That's right; no PGA Tour event until the 2014/2015 season starts anew with the Frys.com Open at Johnny Miller's Silverado Resort in Napa, the heart of California wine country.
Jimmy Walker won the tournament last year, and hopefully he'll be back to defend after a fruitless week in Scotland, but he'll be in unfamiliar surroundings as the tournament moves north, from CordeValle.

2).Meanwhile, the last of four legs of Q-School, which masquerades as the web.com Tour Finals, will be played this week on the "Valley Course" at TPC Sawgrass.
Several "notables" earned enough prize money last week to secure their Tour Card for the coming season, including South Africa's Richard Sterne, Presidents Cupper Sean O'Hair and Ryder Cupper JJ Henry. We'll follow the fates of Henry's erstwhile teammate in Ireland, Vaughn Taylor (he probably needs about $5K) and others through the weekend.

3).And the 2014 Champions Tour continues in Hawaii with two of the PGA Tour greats of the past thirty years, Vijay Singh and Davis Love, making rare appearances. How long before each of them plays full-time on the Champions Tour?

4).Billy Horschel finally realised some of the potential we've been rabbitting on about for years.
Skylar Horschel's gain will be the Ryder Cup's loss as he might just have added a bit of spice to an American Team that appears to have precious little of it.
But Horschel wasn't the only big winner last week. Apart from their tournament prize money, all East Lake's participants earned a FedEx bonus which will have compounded nicely by the time they can use it:
$10M: Horschel
$3M: Kirk
$2M: McIlroy
$1.5M: Furyk
$1M: Watson
. . . plus:
$300K: Rose
$280K: Garcia
$242.5K: Kaymer
Bonuses are paid all the way down to the 150th position in FedEx points, positions 126-150 each earning $32K as well as Conditional Status on the fringes of Tour Membership for next season.

5). Tim Finchem has been leaking details about next year's WGC-Match Play event at San Francisco's Harding Park only sparingly. But he added that next year's sponsor will be a one-off, to be announced in October, and plans for future years have still to be determined. My vote would be for Volvo to pick the WGC up and take it around the world. Please.

6).Perhaps even to India, and that's where Tiger Woods has apparently gone in search of his "World Challenge", now sponsored with a new name, the "Hero World Challenge", to be played at Isleworth; in Florida, not Middlesex unfortunately.
Hero are reportedly the world's largest maker of mopeds which offers the image of Tiger buzzing around Florida, or even Mumbai, the Tour's very own Slumdog Billionaire.
Perhaps David Bowie will be warbling on the first tee.

7).Woods says he's "been busting my butt in the gym pretty hard", which is ironic as most observers seem to feel that's the last thing he should be focussed on. Still, he'll be swinging clubs soon and the world awaits breathlessly as his Isleworth tee-time in early December approaches.
As Family of the Year sing in their "Hero":
"I wanna be a big man,
I just wanna fight with everyone else."
Quite.

8).What do we think of the European Tour suspending play while they carted the bleeding Fabrizio Zanotti off the course at Kennemer last week? Was that perfectly normal or an overreaction to Iain McGregor's death on the fairway in Madeira?
What would the PGA Tour have done?
We've seen David Toms and Joey Sindelar among others carted off in medical emergencies without significant delays but the sports world is getting ever more careful and politically correct, so who knows?
Bert Yancey died 20 years ago on a Senior Tour tournament practice range, but I can't remember whether play continued as normal.

9).The increasingly down-market Golf Digest has an "Undercover Pro" piece this coming month on slow play, calling some aspects of it cheating. The only Tour Pro he calls out for slow play without a remediating remark is Padraig Harrington, which I would think is editorially deliberate. Poor form in my book as there are plenty of Americans, among others, who are equally glacial.
The undercover pro nominated Lucas Glover as the fastest player on Tour, surprising choice I would think as there are plenty quicker, and a fat lot of good it's done him.

10).Twelve US Touring Pros will be assembling in Atlanta on Sunday for their charter to Scotland. Some of the passengers have shown little or no form in recent weeks and one is reminded of Nicklaus's comments one day prior to the 2007 Presidents Cup. To the effect of:
"Hunter, you've been playing well, Lucas is swinging nicely, Charles (Howell), come outside, you need a lesson!"
I wonder what Captain Tom will be thinking?
(Or Skipper McGinley for that matter.)

But they weren't even getting the basics right. No grandstands around the course, no concession stands except by the final part of the 18th fairway, traffic directional signs absent, parking was tricky followed by a long walk down a hillside or sporadic bus service. They might be used to dealing with sheep; that's certainly how the paying public were treated.

I've no doubt at all that they could upgrade the tournament experience, probably for the players as well, at minimal cost but maximum common sense.

super_realist wrote:Spoke to a guy at Celtic Manor this year and he was saying that they simply don't make enough money out of it to make it worth their while.

Does any European Tour event directly make money for the hosts? I've always imagined that the tournaments are expensive advertising to promote a resort, island or even country. Wentworth gets a decent crowd for the PGA and probably makes money, but I'm sure none of the tournaments in the middle east, madeira, turkey etc are commercially viable on a standalone basis.

Celtic Manor has had a massive boost from hosting the Ryder Cup. The elevated green fees and popularity of the courses are purely down to this exposure, so they probably didn't need to host the Wales Open over the last few years. Eventually, the fame will wear off and they'll have to host tournaments again.

Celtic Manor certainly try to dine out on the Ryder Cup and even set you up prior to your round for a photo opportunity. The boards are still around the first tee.

2010 is a great course though, not played the others but they don't look great.

I will certainly go back there to play it again, great resort.

Super

Celtic manor is for Sun readers. What is a man who is used to experiencing Scotland's great courses doing playing there?

Got a good deal via a charity auction.
I can appreciate it doesn't fit in with your Doak Doctrine, but I really enjoyed it.