The PGA Finds the Rough

Normally, we're not talking much about golf during the first full week of September. We're a football nation now, consumed with pigskin after Labor Day. So it's probably a good thing for golf that there is any discussion of it on the eve of the NFL's first Sunday. But . . .

It's taken a bit of controversy for golf to remain on the big sports radar. It's taken a good public spat, to be exact. The PGA intended for the FedEx Cup to raise the profile of golf in September and keep viewers interested beyond the PGA Championship all the way to the Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup. And while it's done that to some degree, it's impossible to ignore Tiger Woods's absence from the first of the four FedEx Cup extravaganzas or Phil Mickleson's absence from the third leg this weekend outside Chicago.

It's a mild dispute as sports disagreements go; we're not talking about a strike or lockout. Ernie Els says the players and Commissioner Tim Finchem's office have "grown apart" over the way the FedEx Cup was implemented, and Woods said it's not in the best interest of the players to play six big events in nine weeks. Hardly any of the top 10 players tee it up four consecutive weeks, as the FedEx Cup requires.

But the fallout is louder than the dispute. It's hard to turn on a radio station or engage in a conversation about the FedEx Cup without hearing the tour pros being called whiners. The NASCAR drivers compete essentially every week. The biggest stars miss nothing. From February to November, they race on all but four or five weekends. Sometimes they race Saturday in a Busch Series race and Sunday in a Nextel Cup race. That's the equivalent of Tiger and Phil playing a Nationwide Tour event on an off day.

People don't want to hear that men who make millions of dollars playing golf are too tired to compete or that it's too inconvenient for them to show up to play for $28 million in prize money in addition to a $10 million annuity for the winner. Of course, even that's a point of contention. The biggest stars want a pile of cash. Mickelson said the PGA should put a big pile of money on the first tee -- $10 million -- and let the winner go to his car with a wheelbarrow.

"Like the World Series of Poker. . . . I think it would be cool," Mickelson said.

What has to annoy the daylights out of Finchem, though, is the notion that he made decisions unilaterally -- as if Finchem would try to unilaterally impose a concept on men as wealthy and as controlling (deservedly so) as Tiger and Phil.

Finchem, by all reasonable accounts, talked to both of them extensively.

They weren't happy with playing beyond September and told Finchem that. He, in turn, tore up the schedule that existed and, with the help of players, came up with this format.

The easy solution here is to bash the golfers, tell them to shut up and man up. But that's too easy. A PGA event is more than four rounds; it's corporate responsibilities on Monday, the mandatory pro-am on Tuesday and a practice round on site Wednesday before the competition begins. Four straight FedEx events means essentially a month away from home. Nobody should expect a pity party, but I understand Tiger and Phil saying: "No. I'm staying home."

This could have been taken care of long ago. My guess is most of the top players are so accustomed to living as soloists and never having to cooperate with anybody that they weren't particularly paying attention when Finchem was laying out his plan and asking for input. Finchem isn't an autocrat simply out to advance his agenda.

That doesn't mean the FedEx Cup doesn't need tweaking. For starters, reduce it from four weeks to three. The top players simply aren't going to play four straight weeks. And from the results Tiger and Phil have, they shouldn't be told they have to. That one week off, scheduled however the players want, should appease a lot of people.

Start with 120 players, cut to 80, then to 40 or fewer. It would have an NCAA tournament feel. That would probably mean cutting the prize money, which the players would just have to swallow.

As much fun as Phil's big pile of money suggestion is, 90 percent of the players could use the annuity awarded to the winner. Tiger and Phil and Vijay and a handful of others don't, but that $10 million, according to accountants, will be worth more than $20 million in 10 years. Not only that, it's not like guys aren't being paid cold cash in the meantime.

Steve Stricker, a guy who made $1 million in a single season only once in the five years before 2006, made $1.4 million by winning the first leg and then tying for ninth in the Deutsche Bank Championship last weekend. Mickelson has earned almost $1.5 million after the first two events. If the players would rather play for $5 million or $10 million in a winner-take-all final weekend, cut the payout the first two weeks.

This isn't the BCS; the FedEx Cup doesn't need to be trashed, just reconfigured a bit. It's never going to feel like a major or cut significantly into football viewership. But if the top players produce the kind of drama they have the first two weeks, meaningful September golf is clearly worth having. And if the bickering ultimately contributes to a solution, it will have been worth it, too.