He's right, although changes to the 2009 postseason format will be minor, not even close to what many were hoping for. Camp Ponte Vedra has dismissed the idea of turning its season-ending Tour Championship into a $10 million shootout, be it for 18 holes among the top four finishers or starting all 30 qualifiers on level ground, which would turn East Lake into a 72-hole gold rush.
Policy board member David Toms is among the advocates of a match-play grand finale. The top four or six players in the standings would be exempt through the first two rounds, the next four or six would get first-round byes, but the tour hasn't seriously considered the concept because it's worried about television ratings and relationships with corporate sponsors.
A Kevin Sutherland-Ryuji Imada final isn't going to move the needle in FedEx Cupville. Too many things can go wrong, so to speak, in a match-play bracket, and the tour isn't ready to lay a stack of dynamite on its suspense-free product just yet. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it, either.
Time for some common sense. "Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he had 20 million people watching 'The Apprentice' and the winner was given a $175,000 job for one year," Ogilvie says. "We've got 2.2 million people watching and the winner gets $10 million. We've got to turn this thing into an event. The golf tournament would still be the focus, but we're almost too traditionalistic in the way we go about things."
Just to clarify, the tour does not actually impose a two-stroke penalty for going outside the box. "We should probably get the reality-show people involved," Ogilvie adds. "Is there a better reality show than sports?"
God bless the tour pro who moonlights as an independent mind. Ogilvie will make a fabulous commissioner some day, but right now, he's just a well-paid scrapper with a ton of ideas, a seat on the policy board and zero pull. The tour's '09 proposal, if you still care, is to move the regular-season realignment back three weeks, meaning the adjustment of point totals would occur before the start of the Tour Championship.
There is nothing wrong with this idea. It eliminates any possibility that Woods or Vijay Singh can clinch the $10 million seven days before the overall winner was meant to be decided, a repeat occurrence that has turned the season-ender at East Lake into the AntiClimax Classic. Point totals for the first three playoff tilts would be increased, as would the rewards at the majors and the Players.
Otherwise, what was conceived two years ago as the tour's big-bang finish will remain a hamburger on a bun in a steakhouse where the shrimp cocktail costs $80. No mustard, no ketchup, no cause for excitement, no reason to put off mowing the lawn until after Woods finishes birdie-birdie-birdie to beat Mr. Underdog, 1 up. Call it what you want, but until someone grabs the dynamite, or even a handful of firecrackers, the playoff series can't be described as anything more than a proverbial work in progress.
One inch per year.
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