That high-pitched sound you hear is the sound of whining from southern California, where the PGA Tour is gathered this week for the Bob Hope Classic.
Once upon a time the “Hope”, a pro-am event, was one of the better weeks of the year featuring as it did all the best players, as well as some of the biggest celebrities, including Hollywood royalty and US Presidents. In 1995, Bill Clinton put the fate of the free world to one side and nipped down to Palm Springs for the week to play in the tournament.
But for the past while the tournament has been something of a non-event. Many of best players (including Tiger and Phil) don’t play in it, and nor do the biggest celebrities (Kenny G doesn’t count). This year’s event is even worse than normal because of the biblical rain that has swept across California all week. Tuesday’s practise day and Thursday’s second round were wiped out, leaving the organisers and players with nothing to do but sit around in the clubhouse to watch TV coverage of the European Tour event in Abu Dhabi and work on their grievances.
Somehow these two activities became inter-twinned and now we have what could describe as a bubbling controversy centring on the PGA Tour’s “conflicting events release”.
As the name implies, this is a release granted to PGA Tour members who want to play in events that conflict with PGA Tour events. This week several PGA Tour players asked for, and received, a release to go and play in Abu Dhabi, most notably Kenny Perry and Anthony Kim.
So far, so what. Except some people appear to have got it into their head that one reason the Bob Hope Classic is such an awful event is that the Abu Dhabi golf championship is a good one; or at least good enough (and, let’s face it, lucrative enough) to attract eight of the world’s top 14 players.
In particular the presence in the Middle East of Anthony Kim ,who spent some of his formative years in Palm Springs appears to irked some, or at least irked Scott McCarron, who happens to be a member of the PGA Tour Players Advisory Council (which is a bit like a trade union, except the members do everything the bosses tell them to do).
McCarron let rip to Golfdigest.com:
The tour does not have to give the conflicting events release. It’s up to (Tim) Finchem (PGA Tour commissioner). He can do that. He can say, ‘Anthony Kim, you can’t go to Abu Dhabi. You’ve got to play here. Sorry.’ For tournaments like the Bob Hope, when you have guys like Anthony Kim and some other guys, especially with local ties, he should be here at the Bob Hope.
“We’re at the start of the season, we need sponsorship, we need everybody playing here. And I mean everybody. For me, being on the PAC, I would say, ‘Mr. Finchem, don’t let any guys out, at least the first couple weeks.'”
The New York Times also notes that the tournament director of the Hope event, Michael Milthorpe would “like to see the tour do a moratorium on them (conflicting event releases), until things pick up”.
Clearly, self-awareness is not on the high school syllabus in Palm Springs, otherwise those running the Bob Hope Classic might have worked out their problem is not that a handful of players have chosen to play on the European Tour but that, in the Bob Hope Classic, they are running a tournament that is deeply unattractive to players, celebrities, spectators and television viewers.
As for McCarron – does he really think the 2010 Bob Hope Classic is a disaster because Anthony Kim isn’t around? And, in any case, why pick on Kim? I might be wrong but I don’t remember Scott McCarron, or anyone else on the PGA Tour for that matter, complaining when Tiger Woods ventured off around the world in years past to Hoover up appearance fees.
Then there is wider issue of events like this week’s in Abu Dhabi tempting American players with their filthy lucre, sowing the seeds of disloyalty and discontent. Clearly, there are some on the PGA Tour who are concerned this is what is happening. If so, they should console themselves with the fact that at least their financial well-being isn’t tied to the fate of the European or Japanese tours, both of which in recent months have been forced to watch as the PGA Tour did everything in its power to tempt Rory McIlroy and Ryo Ishikawa to play full-time in the States.
McIlroy succumbed to the temptation and has decided to take up PGA Tour. Ishikawa declined. Perhaps the young Japanese star was worried he would be forced to play in the Bob Hope Classic as part of some cruel PGA Tour initiation ritual.