Tough to figure how PGA Tour can keep vote totals secret
Padraig Harrington, who won a pair of major championships in 2008 by downright claustrophobic margins, on Tuesday was given the PGA Tour's top honor by an equally microscopic total.
In the closest vote in the history of the tour's Jack Nicklaus Award, the Dubliner edged nine-time recipient Tiger Woods by a single Irish aye.
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| Padraig Harrington is the first European to win the PGA Tour's Jack Nicklaus Award. (AP) |
Don't believe it? Then go ahead, prove him wrong.
In an era when institutional transparency, accountability and publicity mean more than ever, the tour for the umpteenth year in a row declined to release the Player of the Year vote total generated by Harrington, Woods and their peers.
You would think it was random drug testing.
We tried immutable logic, personal pleas to a usually open-minded tour official, then begged for the simplest of generalizations as to the size of the winning margin. Given that Woods had won the award in a mind-boggling eight of the past nine seasons, this is what we in the media business call newsworthy fare. (In golf circles, clearly, we have a lower threshold for what ranks as compelling).
We were rebuffed and threebuffed. So, Harrington's winning margin was as broad as the Irish Sea or as narrow as Steve Williams' mind. I am going with the latter. If the tour doesn't care about facts, why should we?
Actually, given the low-key way the lineup of the tour's postseason awards is handled, why should anybody care about them at all?
We are annually told the vote totals for the Cy Young and league MVPs in baseball. In Philly and St. Louis, they are still kibbitzing about Albert Pujols beating Ryan Howard. Baseball organizations set a release date for their awards, count the ballots, then cough up the details for public digestion, dissection and discussion.
Some leagues court the potential controversy, embracing the free-flowing, animated arguments that follow. The tour hides from it like it's John Daly knocking on their door at 2:01 a.m.
"Because we think the only result that matters is the one who got the most votes," tour communications chief Ty Votaw, usually a reasonable sort, said Tuesday.
Somebody assess that man a two-shot penalty for slow-witted play. Over the weekend, millions of sports fans watched in rapt attention as the Heisman Trophy was announced. Not only were the voting totals released, they were sliced, diced and puréed. By the end of the broadcast, viewers knew the specific breakdown for the first-, second- and third-place ballot tallies, plus how the votes broke down by geographic region. The facts and figures were flying so fast, ESPN disclosed the number of circumcisions that Tim Tebow helped perform during his Filipino philanthropy outing last summer.
