Complacency & Slow Play: The PGA Tour's Biggest Challenges

The recent LPGA policy combating slow play is the latest illustration that the great challenge facing the PGA Tour is complacency. The massive purses help make players complacent and the other side of that coin, huge television contracts, have the tour resting on its laurels. Both of these issues have been touched upon by the mainstream golf press (most notably by Golf World's John Hawkins) there will be a lot of talk before there's any action.

The tour is understandably dedicated to big television contracts. After all, who walks away from big checks? But the tour seems engaged in a naked cash grab and I think I know why. I believe that the tour is looking ahead to a time when Tiger Woods is more interested in bouncing his daughter, Sam, on his thrice surgically repaired knee than he is in winning more majors. It is a simple matter to check the television ratings of events where Woods is not in the field to get a sense of just what the price tag of this day will be to the tour, and its players. The precise figure is lots...

Right now, both the tour and the players have decided that inaction is the best action. The tour is creating more and ever more lucrative elite field events and making run of the mill tour stops look a lot like Nationwide Tour events. Those elite field events give the tour more chances to lure Tiger into the field but they also create a haves and have not effect that is not lost on the rank and file tour player.

The players get some of the blame, too. They cannot possibly avoid being complacent when they've seen the purses increase the way they have. There is now real money in the business of simply making cuts and unless you're John Daly it is just not that easy to spend a million a year which is what number 43 on the money list, Pat Perez, has made so far. Now, I ask you: When was the last time you saw Pat Perez on a leader board, let alone near the lead? Do you think that anyone is looking to watch him on television?

Worse than this is the player's recalcitrance when it comes to the issue of slow play. For them, the deal is done, the money's in the bank, so why pick up the pace? The tour has shown them by deed if not word that playing slowly is not a big deal. The tour's policy is irrelevant when its sanctions are both rare and inconsequential. Fines of a few thousand dollars, which are never levied, will do nothing to motivate players making a couple million dollars a year for living on the cut line.

Want to create a litmus test for which tour is taking slow play seriously? Consider the fact that an LPGA Tour player never gets the luxury of being put on the clock, which is the first non-penalty on the PGA Tour. The first thing that happens to an LPGA player is a two-stroke penalty. Two strokes, especially with the much smaller purses on the LPGA Tour, is a significant hit. Add to this the fact that the LPGA player is held to a higher standard of playing speed than those on the PGA Tour and it's pretty clear which tour is doing more than simply talk about slow play.

The LPGA Tour is a better and leaner product under the helm of Carolyn Blevins. Perhaps a similar infusion of new blood is just what the PGA Tour needs to keep its edge in the post-Tiger era. That era, and all of its financial ramifications, is much closer than any of us might realize.

The Triumph of the Ball-Striker: Sergio Garcia at The Players Championship

I just hate it when significant golf tournaments are won by the players who putt the best over four days. Hot putters come and go but great ball-striking is the true stuff of golf legend. As Hogan said, "There are two games: Putting is playing the ball on the ground but golf is controlling the ball in the air." Though not usually metioned in the same breath as Hogan (yet, anyway), I have seen no better ball-striker than Sergio Garcia. Nick Price comes close but I am not sure that he ever had quite the combination of length and control with the driver that Garcia has owned since he was 19. If Sergio Garcia could have Tiger Woods putt for him the rest of the field would do well to stay home and enjoy the action on television.

Now, I have nothing against Paul Goydos (he's a good California boy) but the idea of him winning The Players by being first in putting and 46th in GIR makes me queasy. If all the talk of The Players being the 5th major have merit it will have to be something more than a putting contest. And, that brings me to the 18th. The boys of Ponte Vedra have got to fix that hole. Having an 18th hole that has evolved into one that few in the field can hit with two shots is just silly.

Can you imagine Hal Sutton exulting, "Be the right club today!" while laying up to 50 yards? The water has become a non-issue with far too many players hitting 3-wood so far right that they leave themselves little or no chance to hit the green. I would say they have two choices. The first is simply to move the tee up 10-20 yards on Sunday. That would present the players with an opportunity they would find hard to resist with the results being more birdies, more tee shots in the water and more approach shots in the water.

The other option is to take the rough out of the right side. That would open the option of playing for the green while still keeping the threat of the water left or the mounds right but still keeping some chance for a birdie.

It's time to seriously talk about The Players replacing the PGA as the fourth major. Let's face it, the PGA of today isn't the PGA of Hagen's day anyway. The Players brings a fantastic course and the deepest field in golf together in a way that the PGA will never achieve with the combination of its nepotostic tendencies toward choosing a venue and qualifying a field. We can save that debate for another day, but that day is coming.