"It's akin to earning a Purple Heart for falling down in the latrine."

I have to say that it's quite sad to see one of the coolest perks in sports appearing to be a casualty of the FedEx Cup/limited field lovefest. Hope they figure out a way to remedy what Steve Elling laments in this week's Up and Down column:

It's akin to earning a Purple Heart for falling down in the latrine. Michael Sim won his third Nationwide Tour event the week before the FedEx Cup series began, which meant that instead of securing the automatic "battlefield promotion" to the big leagues, he was out of luck. The FedEx fields are limited to the points leaders, and he has had no success landing positions in the Fall Series tournaments, either, as established players jockey to keep their cards. Last week, still locked out of a spot in the PGA Tour event, the 25-year-old Aussie went back to the Nationwide and finished second in that circuit's season finale. Since winning his third Nationwide event in August, he has played in one PGA Tour event, and it was on a sponsor exemption. While the landscape of the tour has certainly changed since the FedEx and Fall Series was concocted, there needs to be some accommodation for the players who earned their spots on the major-league roster. The conditional access needs to be greatly updated or eliminated. As it stands, it's about as meaningful as Elvis Presley's black belt in karate.

Comments

[thusgone]

who's elvin presley?

[dsl]

Cromulent metaphors.

[Ky Laffoon's Ghost]

thusgone, you beat me to it! Still, this is just another example of the TOUR protecting its own comfortable mediocrity.

Cromulent? Good thing I have access to the interwebs.

[court]

I guess nobody took Elling by the hand and showed him the link to the Nationwide Tour on PGATOUR.com so he could see that there are more than three Nationwide events before the PGA Tour gets to the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. If Sim had won his third tournament before the playoffs, he might have gotten invitations to play those tournaments, but he didn't - time marches on.

Sim wasn't "out of luck" - he took a little time to rest up and get ready for the Nationwide Tour Championship (which he won) and any of the Fall Series tournaments he might get invited to play - and he still has his card for 2010.

So, tell us Steve - where would you like the Tour to have Sim play on the PGA Tour DURING THE FEC PLAYOFFS WHEN THERE ARE NO OTHER TOURNAMENTS ?? Please - don't say that Sim should have gotten a spot in the playoffs with the guys who had spent the entire season earning points.

Once again - Elling falls short with his thinking.

[Wisconsin Reader]

The Fed Ex season ending series is for the stars (all 5 of them) . . . The Fall Series is largely affirmative action for the mediocre guys. . . Sim is going to be a star so to let him into the Fall series would be unfair competition for the rank and file. . . It is already bad enough they have to play against college kids like those who beat them at the Fry's. . . The next step may have to be not permitting sponsor exemptions into the Fall Series events. . . The Fall Series needs to be kept pure - no up and coming stars need apply. . . We need the Golf Channel guys to be breathlessly updating who is going to finish at #126 on the money list - but he will have "status" into the Tour Qualifying finals the following week - so we need not despair, yet. . . Guys like Fowler and Lovemark who did not play the Nationwide Tour all season should have to make it through the Tour school qualifiers and finals. . . It is too easy for them to make a bunch of money in the Fall Series when the big boys are kicking back. . . And, what if they had allowed Sim in? He might have won all 5 Fall events and been on next year's Ryder Cup team already (had he been an American.)

[FWIW]

Hey Court. He's not saying that Sim should have been in the "playoffs." But excluding a three-time Nationwide Tour winner from the Fall Series is patently absurd. He should be at the top of the exemption list in those events. Read the item before attacking it.