PGA Golf Talk

One man who isn’t down on money is Tiger Woods. He earned $10.5 million during the course of the PGA Tour this season. It’s been interesting to see how this works, because he hasn’t won all that much in terms of first places. But he’s come darn close a bunch of times and sitting near the top of the leaderboard in other situations. It will be very interesting to see what this guy is going to be doing with the money. Also, it’s still going to be interesting to see how far he makes it in the next few years, because he has struggled mightily at times this season, mainly after the time that he was out of the lineup back last year during his injury.

The PGA world is probably going to lose a bunch of sponsors next season. With the economy still in trouble, it will be very interesting to see how many sponsors are able to keep up their previous levels. It’s unfortunate that sports often suffers when things drop like that. They have already lost some big sponsors this year and it looks to be continuing. Buick is another of those sponsors that is out this year. The auto industry has been in the tank for quite awhile and they probably aren’t coming back for a long time. It’s smart that the PGA is thinking about this now, because they might be able to attract some other sponsorships in time for next year, possibly even more smaller companies rather than the big sponsorships of previous years. We’ll be watching to see what happens there.

The PGA Tour Championship is always a tough competition. But this year, we’re going to have to wait a little bit longer, because the area around the East Lake Golf Club  has had so much water that it’s not safe at the moment for the players and spectators to go around the series of holes yet. It’ll be a couple of days, we think, until it will be time for the people to get back into the swing of things, no pun intended. Meanwhile, we will be waiting for the players to get back out onto the field. When they start working out, we will know that they are about to start the game again. Only a few have even showed up in the last couple days but it will be interesting to see them back in action soon.

It’s getting complicated in the PGA world. Once again, the PGA has changed the rules by which their championships are announced, with the FedEx Cup perhaps not being awarded until later and it doesn’t really seem to line up with anything besides itself. But the long and short of it is that the PGA Tour is taking a week off in order to get their players into gear for the all-important Tour Championship in Atlanta this week. It’s exactly what you might expect at a time when the drama is at its highest in the Tour. A break. But then again, the Super Bowl is preceded by a two week break, which serves to heighten the drama, with stories about football for all two weeks, retrospectives, predictions and all that. If only the PGA can make itself a real media event, it might work really well!

I feel a little bit bad writing about Tiger Woods again, but I figured that since everyone else is writing about it too, we might as well have some info. He won over the weekend, at the BMW by 8 strokes. This led the ESPN guy to speculate about Tiger Woods nowadays. One of his points is that Tiger doesn’t win the same way he used to. Back in the late 90s and around the turn of the century, he would win by a lot of strokes and take out his opponents. But now he plays much more conservatively. He gets the lead and loses it more easily. I think the biggest thing is that he will hang near the lead most of the time and then catch up and eke it out. He has had trouble with his putting lately too, which has made for some tense moments, hasn’t it? But he’s doing great even after his “walking on broken legs” thing over a year ago.

When the PGA Tour golfers come to Utah this week, it’s going to be an exciting time. We are looking forward to seeing them work for the Utah Championship. These players have been getting better and there are only a few players between 16 and and 92 who will not be playing there. It’s not usual that Utah gets so many good players at one shot, but it’s going to be interesting to see what they end up playing. Troy Merritt is one of the players that we’re hoping to see break out again this year. He is a strong player who won the Mexico Open last week. He has been improving a lot over the last few years and we’ll have to wait and see if he can keep that trend going over the longterm. Of course there will be quite a few players from Utah to play in the tournament as well. It will be an interesting time.

Steve Stricker won the PGA Tour’s Deutsche Bank title yesterday in an insane last few rounds of the tournament. I had mentioned that I thought Tiger would come back, but it turns out he didn’t. Interestingly, though, all the articles I’ve read tell more about Woods than it does about Stricker, the guy who won! Tiger came rather close but then dropped back a little bit towards the end. He says that it’s mainly because he already knew that he couldn’t win at that point. But Stricker was going to be a really impressive player and he’s won 7 tournaments in the PGA tour. He also has never done a post-victory interview in which he didn’t cry a bit. Oh well, can you blame him?

In another PGA tournament match, it’s going to be interesting. In the current battle, Stricker, O’Hair, Goosen are all in the lead. Where’s Woods? He’s further down. He’s usually not right at the top at this point in a tournament. It generally takes him a llittle while to get into his groove and to start hitting real shots. The next time we look at the leaderboard, we will be able to see Woods. I can’t guarantee it, but it seems pretty probable. This is the usual way with this guy and with these tournaments. He ends up near the top, even if he’s struggling with it as he goes along. We’ll have to see where it ultimately ends up but it’s a lot of fun to track it. Does anyone else track these things like I do?