Commish Wheels Out The Dreaded "Impactful" Word When Asked About Wraparound Schedule's Dismal Ratings

Garry Smits asked Commissioner Tim Finchem about the new "wraparound" schedule and the dismal ratings during the joint PGA Tour-PGA of America kumbaya presser from Sea Island.

Phil Blackmar on Morning Drive dressed as the wraparound schedule.When the "impactful" jargon gets wheeled out, that's never a good thing.

Q.  Tim, just a tad bit off the subject, but can you talk about how the new schedule format has gone at this point, and do you think the TV ratings will improve as the public, the golf fans get used to this new arrangement?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM:  Well, we like the vast majority of what we've seen thus far, the way the finals of the Web.com worked, the flow of ending the season on every aspect at the same time for the first time during the FedExCup period, everything coming to an end.  We really like that.

Strengthening the fall events, as we were talking about earlier with Ryder Cup points, FedExCup points has led to stronger events.  I don't think there's much question about that.

Global interests really plays a role in the fall because we do ‑‑ you know, we played a great event this year in Malaysia, had a very well‑attended, impactful event in China; and now we're headed down to Australia here in a couple of weeks for the World Cup.  So the world stage is in play very much in the fall.

Sometimes we get, I think, too caught up in when you're deep in the football season in this country, it's tough to cut through from a television standpoint.  That's the reality.  That's one of the reasons we moved the TOUR Championship up where we did.  But globally we still maintain interest, and that's important.

So I think we're comfortable from a television standpoint. 

Hey, if a .1 works for you, it works for me!

It's just, you know, watching these tournaments develop.  Right now we're focused on watching the fields, seeing what's happening with the fields, seeing the access that plays out for the qualifiers, the 50 card holders this year.  Thus far the field strength has gone up a little bit, so it's been a little tougher than maybe some of us expected for some of the rookies to get in tournaments.  So that's something to watch.

But overall I think we feel pretty good about it and we'll wait to see how the numbers play out.