Woods not ready to play, same goes for FedEx Cup
By Steve Elling | CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer Follow SteveThe top-seeded player in the PGA Tour's mega-hyped new playoff system just awarded himself a bye week.
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| Tiger Woods will get a chance to recover next week. (Getty Images) |
Season points leader Tiger Woods, who as recently as Sunday night said it was his "intent" to play in all four of the inaugural FedEx events, instead will skip next week's opening tournament, The Barclays at Westchester Country Club in Harrison, N.Y.
Woods, noting on his website that he played the past two weeks, cited burnout. Which, in turn, led to FedEx flameout.
"The truth is, I'm just not ready," Woods wrote.
Woods, who won the Bridgestone Invitational and 89th PGA Championship over the past two weeks, has thus elected to remain on the sidelines as the most expensive and publicized stretch of events in tour history begins.
"Playing the last two weeks in the heat and humidity were mentally and physically draining," Woods wrote. "Major championships are grueling experiences and usually necessitate recovery time."
Black eyes take time to heal, too. After more than a year of incessant self-promotion and endless hype, playing the opening round of the so-called playoffs minus the game's top star is a blow that no amount of creative slant can correct. But that didn't stop the tour from trying.
"We're disappointed that Tiger will not be playing The Barclays next week," said Ty Votaw, an executive vice president with the tour. "It's clear from Tiger's statement he remains focused on winning the FedEx Cup. Whether he can do it will be one of the many exciting things our fans will be following over the next four weeks."
Maybe he meant mini-exciting things.
Spin control? You bet. The first tee ball of the inaugural playoffs just sliced badly out of bounds, into your living room and through your plasma TV screen.
"Any good strategy involves all of the stakeholders buying in," said sports-marketing expert Paul Swangard of the University of Oregon. "Does one infer by his absence that not everybody bought into the idea?"
Seems that way, professor, though Woods indicated he sees value in the ballyhooed new plan and hopes to win the $10 million annuity awarded to the winner, the biggest bonus in pro sports.
"This is in no way a knock on Barclays, their new event next week or the new FedEx Cup series, which I fully support," Woods wrote. "I hope that this extra week of rest will rejuvenate me for the final three events and the Presidents Cup."
Woods spent Tuesday unveiling the site where his first U.S. golf-course design will be built, by the way.
Because he's been seeded No. 1 in FedEx points, the first prize remains statistically within his reach, which upon closer examination, is a systemic flaw worth fixing going forward. The tour has been pimping the FedEx Cup for months, to the point where even the true-believers have been rolling their eyes at the overkill. Earlier this month, for example, tour official and cup architect Ric Clarson likened it to the precursor to the biggest sports event of the year.
"I wonder if the members of the Green Bay Packers, when they won the very first Super Bowl in 1967, which wasn't even called the Super Bowl then, realized their place in history," he said. "Thus, we embark on a new era in golf called the FedEx Cup."
More like the FraudEx Cup now that Woods has disembarked. Did Bart Starr skip the first AFC-NFC Championship Game?
Talk about rub of the green -- consider the machinations behind the FedEx Cup's birth in the first place. Partly to appease Woods and fellow star Phil Mickelson, who each complained that the season was too long, the tour instituted the series and moved the season-ending Tour Championship from November to mid-September. That's irony, folks. Now the season is too condensed.
Woods' agent did not return an e-mail seeking comment Friday and messages left with Barclays and FedEx officials were not immediately returned.
Coincidentally or not, Woods has played at Westchester three times as a pro and never had a top-10 finish.
Because of the overhaul of the tour schedule to accommodate the FedEx Cup foursome, Woods was set to play seven times in nine weeks, assuming he appeared in all four playoff events and plays at the Presidents Cup matches in Montreal next month.
While many details with regard to Woods' career have evolved for the better over time, his last-minute commitment policy remains one of the most infuriating issues with regard to his appearances. Even when Woods commits to play, he rarely lets tournaments know more than a day or two before the deadline, which means that any pre-event marketing is a risky proposition if Woods' image is included on promotional literature. The commitment deadline for The Barclays was Friday at 5 p.m.
At a PGA Tour-sponsored communications session staged last fall, a prominent tournament director openly bemoaned the fact that when top stars like Woods intentionally wait until the last minute to commit, it not only can be misleading to fans who buy tickets based on assumptions that stars will be playing, but it costs the tournaments credibility and cash for charitable contributions when they don't appear.
One uncomfortable instance earlier this year passed virtually without comment, as Woods coyly declined to say whether he intended to play at the Nissan Open in his hometown, Los Angeles. Woods has played in the tournament regularly since turning pro, so for ticket-buyers in the SoCal market, it seemed a safe assumption that he'd be returning. He didn't.
As it turns out, he spent the week taping FedEx promotional television spots for the tour, which meant that tour brass realized in advance that he wasn't going to play in L.A. yet didn't inform fans.
For its part in the parade, FedEx shelled out $35 million in prize money. Generally, the notion of playoffs has been applauded as an attempt to increase fan interest after the major championships have concluded and as football season approaches.
"The FedEx Cup represents an attempt to create excitement in and around the closing stretch of the season, when it's been fairly flat over the years," Swangard said. "I think they are hoping, long-term, that the cup is bigger than Tiger."
We're betting the TV ratings and turnstiles indicate otherwise.
