Do any of you golf fans give a shit about this season ending tournament series?
Have any idea what the points mean? (Don’t worry about trying to explain them to me, I don’t care.) I mean, I’ll be glad to watch some of the tourneys over the next 4 weeks, as they will have a good field. Kinda bothered that they took the Western away from Chicago every other year.
What do you think about Tiger bagging the first tourney claiming “exhaustion”? Personally, I would prefer if he just said, “I don’t want to play it” instead of claiming he’s exhausted. A stud like Tiger doesn’t take 2 weeks to recover from a golf tournament.
Shows how much attention I’ve been paying. :smack:
I think maybe they renamed the Western the BMW.
They’ve been showing those point totals all season. All it meant to me was Tiger was way ahead of everyone else. With 5 wins and a major he’s a lock for Player of the Year. The TPC is a great tourney, but not a major. This season-ending series seems like a blatant marketing ploy.
Here is a potential scenario that illustrates how stupid it is.
Say (for example) that Tiger is leading in the points race going into the last hole of the last event. He is partnered with some nobody that can’t catch him even if he wins, and they are tied for the tournament lead. The last hole is a par 5 with water in front, and Mr. Nobody drills a three wood onto the green in two. You are Tiger - Do you lay up and essentially concede the tournament and it’s $1M purse in order to protect your lead in the playoff series and it’s $10M payoff?
It is a poorly thought out and planned non-event, as evidenced by Tiger (and Steven Ames) skipping the first event and having no chance at being eliminated from the “elimination” tournament.
I think if Tiger really wanted to play, he would, so I think it’s fair to read at least a level of indifference into his absence. He would never skip the Masters over exhaustion. He’d tough it out and credit his physical fitness for allowing him to do so.
He’s so far ahead in the points scheme that **Dinsdale ** doesn’t care about that he could still plausibly win the whole series without playing the first event anyway.
But, no, I don’t really care.
I think the prize money system is odd, too. The winner gets, essentially, 10 million dollars worth of retirement annuities, collectable only after the age of 45. Most of the guys who could conceivably win the FedEx cup are already millionaires many times over, and presumably are set for life. The low guy on the totem pole – the guy who’s 145th on the money list and may only last a year or two on tour, possibly without winning much – would certainly benefit, but I"ve read that the PGA’s own simulations suggest that only the top 13 guys in the standings really have a shot at the prize. So…it’s a bit like offering Lebron James a retirement annuity as an enticement to play in some basketball tournament. What does he care – he’s been set for life since high school.
Having said all that, though, I’ll reserve judgment on the Cup until after it’s over. As prideful and competitive as golfers are, it may very well bring out some exciting play. I’d be happy for that.
Absolutely the only point to the whole charade is to try and convince major golfers to play in the tournaments coming in the late summer, early fall season. The tour was tired of trying to round up sponsors for events that would never see the likes of Woods, Mickelson, et al. For the most part, it seems to have worked; most of the big names intend to play in most of the four tournaments.
I just see this as one more thing that will put more money in Tiger’s pockets. He’s so far ahead in points right now it’s ridiculous. And the system is so complicated-- I’ve read and read and read about it, and I just barely understand it. The points get reset at the beginning of the “playoffs”, where the point leader gets something like 100,000 points (or some crazy, high number) and the guy in second gets 99,000, and so on. Then half the players get eliminated in each of the 4 tournaments, with the point leader at the end getting $10M. I guess they accumulate points again in the 4 playoff tournaments to determine the overall winner.
Lamar: I don’t think your scenario is even remotely likely. If Tiger is winning in points, and he gets second in the final tournament he almost certainly will win the cup.
And don’t even get me started on those crappy commercials…
Yes, that is my point. He could bag winning the individual tournament in order to win the cup. That would be like sending out a horse who has won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness to trot around the Belmont track because some sponsor had put up $10,000,000 for having the best record in the combined events.
{Announcer} Tiger has to carry 230 yards to the green. He needs to make eagle to win! But he pulls out a nine iron and is going to lay up! He loses! But he wins the [del]BMW[/del] FED-EX Cup! Yay Tiger! And in other news, Kevin Na won the tournament.
What crappy commercials? The only commercial I’ve seen with Tiger Woods was one where he goes to a practice pitch. You see everyone hitting the balls all over the place, then Tiger starts up and within a few shots everyone’s following hm and hitting perfectly. Then he leaves and things go back to as they were. Really rather good. I don’t recall the product being sold.
Well, I kinda did. You accumulate points during the season (according to some formula that doesn’t really matter). Once the “playoffs” start, they reset the points as I noted. Top guy =100k, end guy = 99k, on down. That works like a seeding. Then you earn points again at the 4 playoff tournaments (winner gets X points, 2nd gets Y points, where Y < X, and so on) which you add to the points you have going in. The guy with the most points at the end wins. Wikipedia has a decent article, but be sure to follow the link about how the points are awarded.
Tiger’s primary focus is to win majors, with the goal of beating Jack’s record. Everything else takes a back seat to that.
There is a whole series of commercials where big name PGA players ask advice from NFL players about what to do during “the playoffs”. Ernie does one, Furyk does one, Sergio does one… They are really bad, and not just because most of these can’t act-- they’re just poorly written, too.
As noted above, Tiger has a brand new baby. He was also in the final pairing on both Saturday and Sunday at the PGA. That means he had mid-afternoon start times in 100+ degree heat. That’s draining.
Exhaustion is probably too strong a word (although it’s the one most people will understand), but Tiger probably realizes that he’s too worn out to play his best and Tiger doesn’t play when he can’t bring his A game.
Tiger has a brand new baby - and a wife, 100s of millions of $, and who knows how many staff to help out with that.
He’s 30 or so and rock solid. After the PGA he said he felt as strong leaving the 18th green as he did stepping up to the 1st tee, and attributed it to his hard work and conditioning. Either he was lying then, or he’s lying now when he claims exhaustion.
Fuck it. I’d prefer it if he simply said he didn’t want to play a certain event, and is rich enough and has diverse enough business interests that a few million here or there isn’t enough to entice him to do something he doesn’t want to.
Yeah, I’m suspicious of the “exhausted” excuse, too. Do you have a link to the article where you saw this? I usually like to read the actual words someone uses before I castigate them.
So, it’s not a physical thing, it’s a mental thing. He’s mentally worn down from playing back to back tournaments, both in tough conditions, both important tournaments, one a major, both of which he won. He’d like to take a break because he’s not mentally ready to go back out and undertake the effort it takes to win.
Of course, he’s been at this for a while and could have been expected to anticipate the effort involved when he said he’d try to play all 4 FedEx tourneys.
For some reason or another, I think Tiger will scrape by with or without a little slack from me!
