PGA Tour: I'm Thankful for this Lot: Notes from my Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

Nothing to do with Golf, but this week America celebrates Thanksgiving. After nearly 40 years I still don't quite get it but, trust me, everyone else loves it. Like Christmas without presents or Boxing Day.
But it did get me to thinking, What would I be most thankful for? Obviously family and friends but ten others I'm really thankful for, in no particular order, and no golf in sight:

1).Hampshire

2).Radio

3).Sport

4).Wining and Dining

5).The Harrow Inn

6).Music

7).La difference

8).The Mohawk Valley

9).Remy Martin (Pete Townshend was right)

10).Canada


Happy Thanksgiving to all US readers, Happy Thursday and Friday to the rest of us.

It will certainly provide a further headache for those trying to double dip and play only the minimum number of PGAT events. When you exclude the majors, WGC's, Play offs and The Players™ some guys aren't playing a whole lot of regular PGAT events. Hopefully they will just add an event to their schedule and play a random small event each year.

I'd say it's a lousy rule on many levels, the worst being that, on the PGA Tour at least, players just go through the motions at events they're not keen on; this would just increase that behaviour whilst at the same time denying a place in the field for someone further down the Tour's priority status.

Most people prefer to see golfers competing surely, not just rocking up, playing 36 holes (if they don't walk off first) and exiting stage left? I'd say "double-dippers" are the worst offenders at this, but it certainly applies to Americans too.
Dumb move.

Kwini

How many players can afford to increase their OWGR divisor by 1 but their dividend by 0 just through sheer bone idleness?


At the moment there are not too many dreadful fields in a PGAT season so is this a preemptive stike or needless fiddling?

Mac,
I really don't think pros think like that unless they're right on the Top 50/Top 64 edge. The owgr's are fun for us observers but imagine we spend more time thinking about them than most pros do.
Guarantee you can find a dozen or two guys just going through the motions at any bog-standard PGA Tour event. Which is why we usually follow guys for whom the tournament really means something rather than the so-called stars.

A bad idea whose time has not come.

Mac,
I think Snedeker is proving my thesis - who gives a monkey's about owgr divisors when you're there to go through the motions? In this case a whopping appearance fee, no doubt, but it could just as easily be a forced appearance at, say, the Bob Hope or whatever it's called now.

kwinigolfer wrote:Mac,
I think Snedeker is proving my thesis - who gives a monkey's about owgr divisors when you're there to go through the motions? In this case a whopping appearance fee, no doubt, but it could just as easily be a forced appearance at, say, the Bob Hope or whatever it's called now.

At the other end of the spectrum, watched some coverage of the European Tour Q school on TV last night - none of them were going through the motions - more like going through the emotional mangle

Kwini... Except in the rarest cases, I couldn't disagree more with the notion of players showing up at tournaments with the advance notion of just going through the motions.  Now the weeks they make the start and realize they just don't have it and are going nowhere in the event... then yeah...  some of them are apt to mail it in from that point.

And Sneds this week... I very much doubt he approached the Aus PGA that way either.  He's been struggling with his game quite a bit anyway... and 1st round conditions in AUS was NO place you wanna be if your not catching it solid.  But would agree he's one that probably doesn't care much about his #38 ranking right now...  He's  in the first WGC, Players and all the majors anyway... thus doesn't have any OWGR worries until the WGC Match Play top-64.

robo,
I'm surprised!!

I think that's an area where an "investor" can look at most fields and think, "Who's up for this tournament?", and more importantly, "Who isn't?".
And that especially applies to golfers who are "double dippers" (as suggested, think overseas/non-Americans players might be the worst offenders) or sponsor "ambassadors" who seem to be squeezing in a tournament.

Most of the events I attend in person are second- or third-tier tournaments and you don't have to follow most "marquee" groupings for long to see who's just there for a walk.

In (British) racing the connections of those non-triers would be subject to disciplinary action but golf seems not much better than tennis in giving these guys free passes.

Maybe I'm over-critical but it's not entertaining pay money to follow guys who clearly would prefer to be elsewhere. So I try to avoid 'em!