What sealed Westchester's fate was the 2007 Barclays. The tournament had already been struck a devastating PR blow when Woods, in the wake of his win in the extreme heat at the PGA Championship in Tulsa, announced that he would be skipping the event. Along with putting PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem's elaborate playoff system on the defensive right from the start, Woods's no-show reinforced the notion that he had little use for a short, tight course that negated his power advantage. (That Woods chose to play Westchester in 2001 and '03 was a reflection of his relationship with title sponsor Buick, which was replaced by Barclays in '05). In the place of the game's dominant player, a compelling storyline would emerge in winner Steve Stricker, but with modest galleries and player gripes about the condition of the course, the Tour's first playoff event fell flat.
Yet having already committed to Westchester for '08 and at least one more tournament before 2012, the Tour gave the outward impression that it was pressing on with its longtime host, albeit with an extensive list of new requests. In a Nov. 28 meeting at Westchester, Rick George, the Tour's executive vice president of championship management, outlined to Westchester president Halpern a new wish list for the following summer that included a larger corporate village, new limitations on member play during the days leading up to the tournament, that the tennis courts be closed on the week of the tournament, and that the members' upstairs locker room be limited to Tour pros.
Only a few months into his presidency at the 985-member club, Halpern, a successful White Plains trial attorney, expressed reservations about meeting all of what he called the Tour's "extraordinary requests," but that the club would at least discuss them. Privately, some Westchester members sensed that the Tour made the requests without any expectations of them being fulfilled.
Pepe, the former club president and chairman, said: "They made unreasonable demands on purpose to get an out."
Whether or not the Tour's requests were reasonable, Halpern said he acted in good faith to explore their feasibility, and left a voice mail on Dec. 13 for another Tour executive, Ed Moorhouse, wanting to discuss the issue further. According to Halpern, that call was never returned.
At that point, the Tour was already several months into a dialogue with Ridgewood, which had hosted a Senior PGA Championship and a U.S. Senior Open, and in 1935, a Ryder Cup. The connect-the-dots conspiracy theorist will surmise that the Tour had contacted Ridgewood about the 2008 Barclays the moment that Woods said he wouldn't play in 2007, but Ridgewood and Tour representatives insist that the first conversations they had were limited to the possibility of Ridgewood hosting the Barclays in 2010 or '11, and that '08 was brought up only after Westchester's lukewarm response to the Tour's requests.
"We felt we had to give ourselves the option so we didn't crash and burn," says Peter Mele, the Barclays tournament director. "The Tour was looking to ensure it had a place to play in 2008 in case things deteriorated with Westchester to the point that the Barclays would not be played there."
How Ridgewood as host for this summer went from the abstract to reality is clouded somewhat by a confidentiality agreement that limits what Westchester and PGA Tour officials can say about their dealings with each other. What is known is that the Tour made a presentation to Ridgewood in a meeting on Dec. 27, and that details of the presentation began to float between members of Ridgewood and Westchester in a game of country club telephone gone awry.
"At that point there was enough going around," says Alex Khowaylo, who at that time was president of Ridgewood. "From our own members we had heard rumors that came from Westchester that said we were having the tournament, when in fact we hadn't agreed to anything."
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