Texas Children's Houston Open

Memorial Park Golf Course



The Loop

'Tiger misses Bermuda PGA Grand Slam slot'

August 17, 2009

So reads the headline in the Royal Gazette in Bermuda, site of the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. Just what I was thinking, too, that Tiger Woods' greatest disappointment from his failure to win the PGA Championship on Sunday was not that he could have moved one major closer to Jack Nicklaus' record, but that he won't be invited to participate in the PGA Grand Slam of Golf.

The PGA of America often produces one of the most entertaining shows of the year, the PGA Championship, but it also is guilty of delivering among the least entertaining shows of the year, the moribund PGA Grand Slam of Golf. Now that the Skins Game has been shelved (at least this year), is there a more tiresome, meaningless event in golf?

To make it more interesting, the PGA of America ought to take the $1.35 million purse and make it winner take all. Of course, were the PGA to do so, none of the players would bother to show up. In other words, it's little more than a money grab, each player guaranteed at least $200,000.

Then there is the matter of the field, which doesn't produce enough wattage to adequately illuminate the marquee, at least in the U.S. This is not to detract from what they have accomplished, this foursome of Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover, Stewart Cink and Y.E. Yang, either.

An event without a point is one thing. But the same event without Tiger Woods is quite another, and the best reason yet for making this the last chapter.

-- John Strege