|
PGA tour looking for its own world series
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-01 10:42
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. - For almost 50 years, the golf season has been
defined by four major championships that start in April with the Masters and end
in August with the PGA Championship. What the PGA Tour wants is a World Series,
its own version of a Fall Classic.
PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem stands next
to the President's Cup in Montreal on, Aug. 15, 2005, after announcing
that the 2007 President's Cup will be held at the Royal Montreal Golf
Club, North America's oldest club. [AP] | Tour
commissioner Tim Finchem is pulling together the final pieces of a radical shift
in the schedule to feature a shorter season and a points race that intensifies
after the majors. The plan is for three blockbuster events to qualify for the
Tour Championship, with perhaps a $10 million payoff to the winner.
Multiple sources involved in the discussion, all speaking on condition of
anonymity because the changes have not been announced, say the three tournaments
will be the Barclays Classic in New York, the Deutsche Bank Championship outside
Boston and the Western Open in Chicago.
Still undecided is a title sponsor for the Western Open, with Chrysler in
negotiations over the weekend.
Finchem will give his "State of the Tour" on Wednesday at the Tour
Championship, although he might only be able to provide an outline of the
proposed changes.
"I'm not quite sure what I'm going to say," Finchem said in an interview.
"We've got so many things going on. Given where we are, on the brink of going to
TV (negotiations), I don't want to mislead anyone. But I want to give folks a
broad sense of what we're looking at."
A PGA Tour source said Finchem might be in position to announce The Players
Championship moving from the end of March to the beginning of May, which would
give golf a major event every month from April to August.
The changes are designed to put some sizzle into the end of the year, when TV
ratings plummet as golf struggles to compete against football.
|
