Phil Mickelson once made it a point to start his season at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. The reason, he said, was the perfect weather, which is what you want when you're still feeling out your swing. But even before this week there was reason to worry that the relationship between Mickelson and the Hope was on the rocks.
The tournament changed its host course to The Classic Club, a track that skeptics point out is near a wind farm for a reason. In 2006, in a scene from Chris Lewis's book, "The Scorecard Always Lies," Mickelson's caddie, Jim Mackay, remarks upon his first look, "This is the course they're replacing Indian Wells with? Are you kidding me?"
The wind didn't blow that year, but it did in 2007. In the fifth and final round last year, in 40-mile-per-hour gusts, Mickelson hit three balls into the water in a three-hole stretch, had his hat blown off, made two doubles and five bogeys, and eventually carded a 78 to finish in a tie for 45th place. "Nobody's going to come back here," one caddie told me afterward.
Mickelson isn't. He will start his season instead at the Buick Invitational next week, leaving Hope host George Lopez and the rest of the celebrities to yuk it up without him.
Getting the top talent to show up is the name of the game on the PGA Tour, non-major division. Tournament directors use everything at their disposal, from perks to prize money, but their greatest asset or liability remains the course itself. With the jarring absence of Phil Mickelson, we'll see how long The Classic Club stays in the rotation at the Hope.
Not long, if the example of the Barclays is any indication.
The first event of the FedEx Cup playoff series in the fall, the Barclays made news in 2007 for its failure to attract Tiger Woods. It was an embarrassment for the Tour, considering all it had done to market the sport's new megabucks endgame, but Woods simply doesn't like Westchester Country Club. Never has.
Now, according to an article in Monday's New York Times, the Tour is bailing on the remaining five years of a six-year agreement for Westchester to host the Barclays. The tournament is expected to leave the storied club, which had hosted the event since 1967, for Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., perhaps as early as this year.
Among several points of negotiation mentioned in the article, the Tour asked Westchester to limit or restrict play in the week leading up to the tournament; wanted to remove three trees; and sought full access to holes 16, 17 and 18 for the six weeks it would take to build its corporate village and other fan accommodations. But members hadn't even had a chance to vote on those requests when the Tour gave up on Westchester. One club member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the real reason the Tour was abandoning the storied venue was due to CBS's underwhelming TV ratings in 2007.
Which of course is where Woods comes in. New York, with its vast fan base and cluster of big-time media outlets, is one of the best places for the Tour to market its product, and yet Woods had played Westchester only three times in the last 10 years. For the Tour, it was the equivalent of getting a big, juicy fastball over the middle of the plate every year, only to be reminded that your home run hitter, the guy you really want up to bat, is thousands of miles away, maybe on his yacht.
