Scruffy's Word: $10,000,000.00 Carrot Dangling in 2007

ABOUT SCRUFFY'S WORD

Scruffy's Word is another opportunity to introduce the characters of Scruffy & Pals.
Here you will meet me, Scruffy, and my pals and learn about our personalities as we give humorous and sometimes serious tips, opinions and commentary on various golfing subjects and product reviews. I hope you will enjoy your visit....be sure to take your time and look around. I have carefully selected a lot of stuff that I think you will be interested in.
OH...one more thing, we are the feature cartoon in the UNIVERSAL GOLF MAGAZINE.

2007 FedExCup

Hello, I am Hoss. Scruffy has asked me to talk to you about the 2007 PGA season and the FedExCup. Can you say “ten million bucks”? That is the pot of gold that will be waiting at the bottom of the cup for the player with the least strokes in the ’07 Tour Championship. To put that in perspective, $10,000,000.00 would buy you 660,000 sleeves of Series I Scruffy & Pals golf balls! WOW!!

A couple of years back, according to Crash, NASCAR fans and many of the race teams were losing interest because the championship was being locked up way too early in the season, making the end of the season dull and uninteresting. So, NASCAR came up with a point system called The Chase for the Cup, which made it impossible to lock up the championship until the end of the season. Now, the fans are excited, the drivers and teams motivated and NASCAR revitalized.

The PGA Tour has a similar problem. Once "The Majors" are completed, keeping folks interested in attending and or watching televised tournaments has become a huge challenge; sponsors are reconsidering their commitment and some of the top players have shown their unwillingness to participate. So, the PGA TOUR's commissioner, Mr. Jim Finchem is following NASCAR’s successful point system by introducing The FedExCup in the 2007 PGA season. The season will be divided into three parts; the "Regular Season", the "PGA Playoffs", and "The Fall Series".

The "Regular Season" starts with the Mercedes Championship in early January and ends with the Carolina Classic at Greensboro in late August. Then the "PGA Tour Playoffs" will start which will be comprised of The Barclay's Calssic, The Deutsche Bank Championship, the BMW Championship and end with The Tour Championship, which will decide the winner of the FedExCup and the $10,000,000.00. The Fall Series will consist of the remaining sanctioned PGA Tour events. Those players who did not finish in the top 30 in the FedExCup will need to play well in the final events to assure their eligibility for the '08 season.

So, next year should inject some high octane into a game that could use a boost. I am just not sure what that amount of money might do to the sport in the long run. Consider this season's money list with Tiger heading the list earnings of $9,941,563. You have to go all the way to Craig Barlow, #93 on the list to run out of players who earned over a million smackers.

Now, compare that to the 1996 money list with #1 Tom Lehman's earnings at $1,780.159 and Mike Hulbert, #93 on the list with $235,131. Scott Hoch rounded out the players earning over a million dollars and he was #9 on the list.

In 2007, it is conceivable that Tiger could earn over $20,000,000.00.

WOW!! He could buy 1,300,000 sleeves of Scruffy & Pals golf balls.....

COME ON TIGER!!!

Oh, yeah; you can catch all the action for the next 15 years with one click of the remote 'cause The Golf Channel will be carrying all the PGA tournaments this year.....we'll see how that goes!