"How about we decide that if appearance fees are paid, there are no more World Ranking points?"
Loads of interesting tidbits in John Strege's Golf World game story from the beleaguered Hope, starting with this from Paul Goydos on the issue of conflicting-event releases.
"Tim [Finchem] has a relationship with everybody involved, and right now it doesn't seem like he's doing a good job keeping the players and helping our sponsors," Paul Goydos said. "I think Tim needs to do a better job at that."
Strege then quotes the Commish:
Later pressed on the matter in an interview with Golf World, Finchem replied, "We believe, in general, that the conflicting-events guidelines are working fine. We will not overhaul the conflicting-event guidelines just because of one week."
Granted, it's a week without a sponsor and in Ponte Vedra-speak, was a longtime platform anchor that did more than any single tournament to activate the tour's brand as a charitable beneficiary while cross-pollinating golf's unique status as a sport of presidents and celebrities, but why help it in this time of need?
I know, I know, market forces trump loyalty and in this case, common sense.
Strege goes on to remind us of Finchem's December, 2008 kidnapping video along with Anthony Kim's ties to the Hope that included a sponsor's invite in 2007. But I was most intrigued by this suggestion from Goydos:
"You think any of those guys would be over there playing if [event organizers] weren't paying an appearance fee? How about we decide that if appearance fees are paid, there are no more World Ranking points?"
Geoff
**Jim McCabe suggests this is not a release issue (look deep in his Hope notes) by documenting the number of players who received them and their home country. While I get that point, the big picture issue here is that players haven't really stepped up to add more tournaments to their schedules and the tour is limited in what they can or will try to do. Oh, and the Hope pro-am format stinks. You can't make people play four days without some guarantee of getting at least a small check for your time listening to banal pro-am stories.
Geoff
**Steve Elling and Scott Michaux have quite the spirited debate over releases.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 09:47 AM 13 Comments | in 2010 PGA Tour, Bob Hope Classic, PGA Tour, Tim Finchem 
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Reader Comments (13)
Right Paul: why would people want to step out of the USA and see some of the big world out there?
I think it's important to remember, not everyone is the same as we are, there are actually people who like to travel and see different parts of the world. Not only that, but I think many of these guys don't fully understand the extent to which other parts of the world have caught up and surpassed the United States as great places with lots to offer. If the PGA tour does not begin to transition into some kind of world tour, it will soon become a 2nd tier tour.
While Goydos is usually good with an interesting quip now and again perhaps Paul should play well enough to actually be offered an appearance fee over seas and he would probably feel different.
Sorry if this came off sounding a bit harsh but Paul is out to lunch on this.
As for Kim, to receive a sponsor's exemption in 2007 and now to play abroad for appearance money - that is a cold move for a partially local kid.
For more than a decade now - since the Home Tour Points formulation was added to OWGR - the World Ranking system has been progressively biased towards REWARDING top players who play in shallow depth non-PGATour sanctioned events on the international circuits that (largely through the payment of appearance fees) attract A FEW top players.
Several factors within the OWGR formulation including - but not limited to - these three primary flaws have been continuously working to disadvantage PGATour (only) members over the past decade or so.
1) Too much emphasis on the top 30-50 ranked players - and not enough emphasis of the quality of the overall field. Plus, no positive impact at all for players outside the OWGR top 200.
2) A special addition to the formula about a decade ago - called Home Tour Points - that was specifically designed to IMPROPERLY give an unfair ranking advantage to weaker tours in relation to PGATour - ESPECIALLY when a few top ranked players participated in an event. Home Tour Points might more accurately be named the APPEARANCE FEE EVENT RANKING BONUS.
3) An unusual non-linear point payout formulation that quickly allows weak fields to pay out a lot of ranking points when a few top players participate, but then requires massive additional increases in so called total field rating points to generate further increases in payouts - specifically in the cases of the strongest non-major PGAtour events. Again, this gives a quick ranking point boost for appearance fee fields and then proceeds to devalue really strong events in comparison to the artificial boosts given to much weaker fields.
We MUST remember that OWGR was essentially created by IMG. And, even a very casual glance at how the composition of the top 30 (or 50) ranked players has been changing over time should be enough for anyone who follows the game closely to understand why young players like Kim and Villegas and Ogilvy and .... who might have once preferred a PGATour-only schedule like older top players such as Love or Perry or even Vijay (to a lesser degree) have traditionally played - are now opting for a more international schedule.
These players are not blind and you can be sure that their handlers - IMG and other agents - ARE MAKING SURE that they see how "profitable" and "ranking friendly" that increased numbers of appearance fee events can be. That way the agents get to collect their slice of those appearance fees.
The players can see the ranking successes of Westwood, Kaymer, Stenson, and on and on and on.... players who annually earn a whole lot of ranking points at ET, ET cosanction and even the occasional Asian, Japan, Australasian or Sunshine event.
They know that Charl Schwartzel just won back to back SA events and that a little more than a year ago, Richard Sterne did the same thing.... AND both were rewarded with instant top 50 rankings.
They know that Ryo Ishikawa and Yuta Ikeda were both 4 time winners on Japan Tour and now sit comfortably at 30 and 33 on OWGR.
If international events pay professionals a BUNCH of money to participate AND tend to ALSO pad the world rankings of those who participate, why would top players want to INCREASE their PGATour play, when both their rankings and their incomes tend to benefit by REDUCING their PGATour play????
UNLESS the OWGR computation is changed, fewer and fewer top 50 players will play on PGATour FULL TIME as every year passes, just as fewer and fewer full time PGATour players have been inside the top 50 every since the ridiculous HTP formulation was adopted a decade or so ago.
Appearance fee payments should NOT disqualify an event from being ranked IMO, but the ranking system should also NOT BIAS AGAINST those players who play in the deeper field PGATour events that DO NOT award their top ranked participants with appearance fees !!
No matter how the players were enticed, the movers and shakers in Adu Dhabi are merely running true to the capitalist, free market ideals as espoused by the self-styled "world's greatest democracy".
Also amusing that nobody seems p*ssed that Ogilvy chose to play the desert swing of the ET this winter, as he did last. Presumably he doesn't count, as he isn't American?
I think it's great that more and more players see golf as a world game. The PGAT is still, and will continue to be, the world's premier tour, as over the course of a full year it carries more financial clout than the ET or AT. Why do they suddenly feel so threatened so early in the season?
Even if PGAT purses fall by 25%, most golfers will still continue to make obscene amounts of money. Those sitting around 50th in the money list will still find themselves to be wealthy men.
You win the post of the Year award on this site! (I know it is only January - you still win!) Great information and explanation. . . It is all about the benjamins. . .
Ultimately . . . As the "world tour" concept flourishes - it seems obvious that the U.S. PGA Tour will lose the events that are now "skipped" by the top players. . . But, Mr. Finchem will have long since retired and moved down to Hobe Sound - he might even consider buying Tiger's joint - it is almost completed I hear?
You mentioned Westwood, Stenson, Casey... Westwood has consecutive T3 finishes in the last two majors (British and PGA), not to mention the 2008 US Open. Stenson won last year's Players, and gone 9--T13--T6 in the three majors since. He's a past winner of a WGC. Casey won last year's Houston Open and took 2nd in the WGC-Accenture before being plagued with bad ribs the last half of the year.
And I haven't mentioned a single ET, Asian, Japan, Australasian, or Sunshine tournament.
I suppose you could make a case that among those ranked lower, maybe Kenny Perry deserves to be ranked with those ET guys. Anybody else? What has Anthony Kim done lately?
Even if there were no Home Tour Points, Abu Dhabi would still have paid many more OWGR points than the Bob Hope. The Hope failed to attract a single one of the top 35. Abu Dhabi attracted a bunch. Shouldn't Abu Dhabi get more OWGR points? Blame it on IMG if you want, you could even be right, but IMG doesn't work for the PGAT.
As far as recently televised golf events go, I was mesmerized by the play of Watson and Couples Sunday night. That was worth watching, even on an "easy" golf course. Go, Old Tom!
Over the winter, when the PGA has been in hibernation and we've been shown world golf exclusively, it's become pretty obvious that the standard of golfers playing on the overseas tours is very high, and that there is now very little difference in the general standard of play between the PGATour and the ET, especially when TW and PM are not playing, and that on a growing number of occasions the big (and toughest) tournament of the week is on the ET not the PGATour.