Twenty-four hours later, the one shocker of the Ryder Cup news conference continues to be the decision to pronounce the PGA Tour's wraparound schedule non-conducive to creating a Cup team.
Thanks to reader Tim for highlighting Phil Mickelson's answer to the question.
Q. Why the switch from just strict money that Azinger had installed to counting them as points?
PHIL MICKELSON: I'll take that. Because it was very confusing when the Tour, after having players play major championships, the PGA, the World Golf Championships and the FedEx Cup, who then played nine out of 11 weeks, let's say, then stopped, the Tour's next season starts a week later. If you count money for those last three or four months, you're giving the bottom half of the Tour a three month head start over ultimately the top guys. So you wanted to start that money in 2015 but the Money List on the PGA Tour list starts in September or October. So it was getting confusing. That's why we ended up with the points system of points per $1,000 or $2,000 made.
Just last week at Riviera Bubba Watson talked about pretending the fall events in the year-round PGA Tour calendar do not exist and that he schedules accordingly.
In light of the Ryder Cup switch, it would seem the wraparound is about one bullet from losing any relevance it might have had (remember, Rory and Tiger are required to play this fall's Frys.com, but after that they'll never be seen there again).
If the Masters no longer granted exemptions to post-playoff event winners, the fall schedule could lose even more relevance. Nothing against those fine events, of course. Not their fault the schedule is bloated.
Zak Kozuchowski notes that this puts Lydia ahead of two very young greats...combined.
