RSS
Home
Woods not into Finchem's video request
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
As the 2009 PGA Tour gets ready to begin next week, reality might finally be setting in. For years the Tour and its players have largely been immune to the economic conditions in the real world. A player, for example, doesn't even have win a tournament to make more than $1 million annually in prize money.
.jpg)
But with the world economy collapsing around it and a new television contract to be negotiated soon, the Tour and its players are at least getting a glimpse of the world outside the ropes. That became more apparent at last month's PGA Tour qualifying school. Understand that in the past, any player who received his PGA Tour card could expect somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000 in an equipment contract or bonus. Word from this past Q School, however, is that many of those Q School graduates were sorely disappointed when those checks didn't come.
Sorry guys, looks like you'll have to work a little harder for your big bucks this year. Maybe even play in a few more tournaments. Certainly the equipment companies, who use club and ball counts on the PGA as ways to validate and market their products, would like that.
PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem would like that, too. Finchem, perhaps the most savvy of any boss in sports, last month sent a video to Tour players and their agents asking them to consider increasing their schedules in 2009.
"We’re asking every player to add a tournament or two to their historical schedule to assist the tournaments that historically have weak fields,” Finchem said. "We have a lot of title sponsors this year that are up for renewal. We have to put our best foot forward in terms of presenting our competitions."
Best foot? Try best leg. In the end, the only PGA Tour player who counts in this equation is Tiger Woods, who has been rehabbing a bum leg since knee surgery this past summer. The Striped One's reaction to Finchem's video?
"If he wants me to play three or four more tournaments, that puts me at eight or nine," Woods said.
That's a typical half-joking answer one might expect from the world's most famous athlete, but one that nevertheless has to have Finchem concerned that in the Tour's world of independent contractors, the ultimate independent contractor isn't taking his request seriously.
