Tonight a dinner topic was the PGA TOUR. We all thought the recent Masters was a great event, even before it started we had decided there could only be two possible winners, Tiger Woods or one other person. The other person won, this time.
But what we discussed was, has the PGA TOUR already become three Tours? There’s the very competitive Nationwide Nike Hogan Tour, TOUR III. How does the newest sponsor get to rename all the older trophies, do they actually put Nike over Hogan and then Nationwide over the Nike? The announcers certainly do.
Then there’s the 20 PGA events that Tiger does not play in, PGA TOUR II. This is comprised of all the events sponsored by companies that Tiger does not endorse. It includes the toughest field in golf, The Players at TPC Jacksonville. Many of these events are having sponsor trouble, who wants to spend $30 million over the next 5 years without a TV audience or a good date?
The LPGA is competion for this Tour, even if they don’t know it yet.
And then there’s the Elite PGA TOUR I comprised of the events that Tiger plays in. These are either his sponsoring companies or events that IMG consider Majors. I fear that this tour will become a free agent very soon. Some of their members might even miss the Fedex Cup.
Is this good for tournament golf? Do we care?
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