The Blue-Collar Crowd

Filed in archive Golf News on September 23, 2007

John Rollins Grinds It
Courtesy: Reuters

This is the anticlimax of the professional golf season. If it were a TV plot, then the bad guys would have been caught and, after the final commercial break, we'd find out how the good guys did it.

It's mopping up time, in other words. The Fall Series.

And if you needed any clearer evidence of where the PGA Tour makes its money, look no further.

Now that the much-ballyhooed Battle of the Titans, a.k.a. the FedEx Cup, is over, another, more pressing struggle begins. And it's going virtually unnoticed.

This is when the also-rans, the journeymen, whatever you want to call the grinders on tour, fight to hang on to their playing privileges.

Yes, it's still about money. But it's not big, shiny pots of money coming from a worldwide delivery company. It's scratch-and-claw money. Make just enough and the Tour will allow you to turn up next season and begin the process all over again.

But try to find coverage of today's final round of the Turning Stone Resort Championship on network TV and you're out of luck. Only The Golf Channel is televising the action.

That's how important this is to the PGA big-wigs. The banquet is finished and the crumbs are left for the serving staff to fight over.

No more big names dropping out, citing fatigue and promising to be there "next week".

No more headlines screaming doom and gloom for the future of Tim Finchem.

It's the turn of the blue-collar crowd.

Is there not enough drama in a field of players fighting to maintain their livelihood that the PGA couldn't strong-arm a network telecast out of somebody other than a cable carrier?

Should we assume they care as much about The Fall Series, as they self-importantly call it, as they do the FedEx Cup?

I don't think so. The networks would rather run college football; the sponsors are probably tapped out and getting ready for the fall ratings run.

For more on how intense and important the struggle is for many players, visit this link at the Tour's website. At least someone who works there, gets it.