PASADENA, CALIF. — What's the best way to bring a season to a rousing end? Every sport tries to answer this question and some succeed better than others. The PGA Tour has yet to come up with a satisfactory response. It's sputtered and stuttered to a stop.
These thoughts come to mind here in the Rose Bowl city. Bleachers along Orange Grove Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard await the huge crowd that will watch the Rose Parade on New Year's Day, after which the University of Southern California will meet the University of Michigan in the Rose Bowl. The University of Florida will meet Ohio State in the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship game in Glendale, Ariz., on Jan. 8, but the Rose Bowl remains a potent symbol that has, since its inception in 1902, pretty much signified the end of the U.S. college football season.
Does the PGA Tour have a Rose Bowl? What is its Super Bowl, Stanley Cup final, World Series, Grey Cup, National Basketball Association final or NCAA basketball Final Four? The answer is obvious. It doesn't have one.
The PGA Tour hopes to rectify this situation with its new FedEx Cup. The Mercedes Championships next week, for last year's PGA Tour winners, will open the season-long competition in which players will gain points toward a series of closing events. They will qualify for three tournaments in late summer that will act as a playoff series toward the final tournament of the FedEx Cup, which will award $10-million to the winner.
It remains to be seen whether the FedEx Cup will work. The PGA Tour, after all, and much to its frustration, has nothing to do with the truly big events. Those are the four major championships: the Masters, U.S. and British Opens and the PGA Championship. These are the career-defining tournaments.
Only the keenest golf fans know that Jack Nicklaus won 73 PGA Tour events, but many golf watchers are aware that he won 18 professional majors. Only the aficionados know that Tiger Woods has won 54 PGA Tour events, but many followers are aware that he's already won 12 majors.
Similarly, many Canadians, even those with only a limited awareness of golf, know that Mike Weir is a Masters champion. Far fewer Canadians know he's won seven PGA Tour events, including the Masters. (The record books count the majors as PGA Tour wins, although the organization doesn't run these events.)
It wouldn't be fair to write off the FedEx Cup before it's started. But it will never be nearly as important as the majors. In the same way, it's impossible to see how the Presidents Cup will ever be as popular as the Ryder Cup. The Presidents Cup is a minor event, except for the week in which it's played.
That's the case even 13 years after the PGA Tour started it in conjunction with other tours so that international players could compete against an American team every two years, as the Europeans do in the Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup started in 1927.
The FedEx Cup is likely to be more about money than anything else. Woods and every player would compete in the Masters if the prize were a trophy and the green jacket and nothing more. Ditto for the other majors.
The Masters so much as acknowledges this by not making public the purse for each year's event. The players don't even know what they're playing for until the tournament committee announces the prize fund during the week.
Notwithstanding the obstacles that could affect the FedEx Cup, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has never been less than optimistic. No surprise there, of course.
"We are now well positioned to offer PGA Tour players, along with other important Tour constituents, a more compelling finish to our season," Finchem said last month of some reductions to the fields in the three big tournaments leading up to the closing event. "With this step, PGA Tour players, sponsors and fans can look forward to the inaugural FedEx Cup season and the exciting drama of the 2007 PGA Tour playoffs for the FedEx Cup."
Exciting drama? Fans looking forward to the first FedEx Cup? On the eve of the 2007 PGA Tour, aka FedEx Cup, we're headed either for a Rose Bowl of golf, or, more likely, a format, that, if it does bloom, will take years — many, many years — to do so.
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