Living On Easy Street
What's wrong with the fall series? John Hawkins believes it's Camp Ponte Verda's version of the politician who promises a chicken in every pot, which is the problem
It was a gorgeous Wednesday morning when a friend called and said he needed a fourth to play Pine Valley and Merion the next day. He sounded flabbergasted when I told him I couldn't make it, not with the Golf Channel offering live coverage of the Ginn sur Mer Classic at Tesoro that afternoon. As conflicts go, this was a no-brainer. Why on earth would anyone go play two of the greatest courses ever designed when you've got Robert Garrigus and Kent Jones in the late half of the draw?
Go ahead, call me crazy, but this Kool-Aid is good stuff. It turns the PGA Tour's Fall Series into a compelling seven-week drama with an endless cast of tour pros on the fringe, as if not making the top 125 means a guy will have to wait tables and set aside his tips for Qualifying School. It probably should work that way, although the same dude could shag balls at the local range instead of taking orders at Bennigans, but it never has and never will.
Harrison Frazar finished 131st on the 2007 money list, earning $698,534. I don't know about you, but I would call that righteous bread for a player who had two top-10 finishes in 32 events. Nonetheless, it ended Frazar's streak of 10 consecutive seasons in the top 100, and at Q-School last fall, he missed retaining his card by two shots.
A career in crisis? Maybe, but it wasn't for a lack of opportunity. Frazar made his 21st start of the year at last week's Frys.com Open, where he missed the cut and fell to 165th on the money list. Six of those 21 starts were prior to the Masters, when spots for non-exempt players are harder to come by, including Phoenix and Pebble Beach, a couple of pretty good events.
He's a good guy, and obviously, he'd be a handful if you brought him to your member-guest, but Frazar is among dozens of players who live off the fat of the land. Yes, he had those 10 straight seasons in the top 100, but just once did he finish in the top 50, and he remains winless in 298 career starts.
A few dimes shy of $8 million in total earnings, Frazar won't be waiting tables or shagging balls anytime soon. Despite falling deeper down the money list in 2008, he's likely to get into at least 20 tournaments next year, and there will be plenty of others who do the same. So the next time you hear some Golf Channel analyst talk about do-or-die time or refer to the top-125 bubble, feel free to laugh.
Of course, you'd have to be watching. I'm a big fan of free enterprise and have gotten to know a lot of the pros in the tour's bottom third, but for every event that matters, there are two that don't, and the $5 million purses awarded throughout the Fall Series give those tournaments a grossly inflated value. This week's gathering in Florida, for instance, will pay more to the champion ($828,000) than Tiger Woods earned for winning the Buick Invitational just five years ago.
A couple of good weeks against weak fields is all it takes to stay exempt, and these days, there are more weak fields than ever. If you don't earn your card? No big deal.
Until the tour dramatically reduces the number of FedEx Cup playoff qualifiers, which remains at 144, there won't be a more obvious compromise to the relevance of the top 125. During the eight-month regular season, a points system serves as the competitive measure. After the playoffs, it reverts back to money. In addition to the inconsistency, this allows a player who has done nothing all year to undergo a complete status overhaul without beating any top-tier players.
We saw it last week in Scottsdale. Cameron Beckman had gone an entire year without a top-10 finish. He had two top 25s in 26 starts, for crying out loud. The victory moved him from 175th to 86th on the money list, plus the two-year exemption and a reservation at the Mercedes Championships, where he'll find all kinds of goodies in his room at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua.
One could make a case that meaningless golf is better than no golf at all, a point that would hold more weight in a healthy economy. The tour's TV ratings have been horrible for a while, and with the country stumbling through a financial crisis, you wonder how long Corporate America will shell out $6 to $8 million for title-sponsorship rights to an event with Mike Weir as the headliner.
