A couple of weeks ago, a press conference was held here in Washington, DC to announce the creation of the AT&T National. It is the new tournament that will take the July 4th weekend time slot that became vacant when Jack Vickers decided to pull the International from the schedule effective immediately.
The creation and announcement of the event seemed to help fill a gap the PGA Tour was desperate to fill. A solid new event in the nation's capital, presumably held at a spectacular course in Congressional, and the charitable proceeds would benefit the Tiger Woods Foundation. Even better than that, Tiger Woods would be the official host of the event. In essence, it was a guarantee that Woods would appear in Washington at least once per year to play in his event. It sounded like another problem solved.
Then it came out that the AT&T National would be an invitational tournament. For those not too familiar with PGA Tour field structures, an invitational tournament is a type of limited field event that creates a minimum number of players to be invited to play — a number the tournament usually employs. Some examples of invitationals are last week's Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Memorial Tournament hosted by Jack Nicklaus.
So, what is so wrong about having an invitational tournament? Well, the struggling journeyman professional would tell you that it takes away a week for them to play on Tour. This is because there are qualifying rules to earn invitations to these events that many struggling pros do not meet. Thus, they cannot compete during that week on the schedule unless there is an alternate field event held concurrently with the invitational. There is no alternate field event like that on Tour for an invitational event. This means that struggling pros have to sit it out for a week on the PGA Tour while the best players get a chance to earn a slightly larger check because of the smaller field.
This does not seem like a big deal until you think about the number of limited field events that the Tour holds each year with alternate field events to complement the excluded players. There are five invitational events held during the season that do not have alternate events for other players. That seems pretty benign on a schedule with more than 40 events.
Now consider that the four FedEx Cup playoff events have limited fields and struggling players are not as likely to make it through all four events, much less one. Then, consider that the two World Golf Championships events with alternate field events. The WGC events offer a purse approximately 2.5 times the size of their alternate counterparts, have no cut (guaranteeing a payday for the rich just for showing up), and also have bonus FedEx Cup points added to their pools just to throw salt in the wound. And, while not technically limited field events, let's go ahead and throw the major championships in there because it is hard to qualify for one, much less all four, if you are struggling week to week.
That totals 15 events on the PGA Tour FedEx Cup schedule that have limited fields and restrict a struggling professional from making the money needed to keep their Tour card. Fifteen events out of 36 on the FedEx Cup schedule turns out to be a little bit more than one in three events. For a struggling pro, that means they really only have 19 guaranteed events to make good money during the FedEx Cup season.
The Tour would tell you that statistic is a little misleading. This is because the PGA Tour invented the Fall Series — seven events after the Tour Championship (and the $10 million FedEx Cup payoff) that players can enter to earn money toward the money list and maintain their Tour card. The Tour also did a favor to the struggling players because these events are specifically designed to "finalize the following year's eligibility for players who do not finish in the top 30 of the FedEx Cup."
Read: the players who are not all that good can vie for these scraps. These seven events range in purse size from $3.5 million to $6.0 million. With the exception of the $6 million Turning Stone Championship, most events in the Fall Series hover around $4.5 million. The average FedEx Cup event hovers in the area of $5.5 million.
It is not hard to see what the Tour is doing here. They are furthering the divide between the two PGA Tours — the one for the players already crowned stars and the one for everybody else. If you can find a way to climb into the upper echelon of the PGA Tour and get into the haves club, then life is pretty peachy: complete scheduling flexibility, several events with guaranteed paydays, invitations to all kinds of tournaments, and access to events with higher than average purses. The problem is that the road to get there is becoming harder to navigate.
For as difficult as the Tour is making it for struggling players to get into that upper echelon of status, let's be real for a moment. There were 93 millionaires last year on the PGA Tour money list. The man at 125 on the money list, exempted Darren Clarke, made a measly $661K last season. Struggling is a very loose way of describing that kind of cash flow — even considering the high expenses of being a Tour pro.
Professional golf is an extraordinarily difficult job. Arguably, it is the most difficult sport to maintain consistent financial viability — even with mini tours and newer mid-major tours sprouting up in recent years. Once pros reach the highest level of competition on the PGA Tour, they want to and deserve to have every opportunity to be able to hold onto what they have earned. It seems, though, that it is becoming increasingly difficult for that to be possible for struggling pros.
It could be said that they should just play better, work harder, or step aside for the next wave. But, really, while the difference between number one on the money list (Tiger) and 119 (David Brenshaw) is huge, the difference between Brenshaw (119) and Omar Uresti (134) is very small. The difference between keeping a Tour card and having to struggle to keep the dream alive can come down to a handful of shots over an entire season. The least the PGA Tour could do is to make sure that margin for error does not become smaller because while these guys are good, that kind of pressure is ridiculous.
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