The fact that the Tour was talking to Ridgewood at all was enough to irritate Halpern—to the point that the Westchester president shut off communication with the Tour. "As soon as I learned they were meeting with Ridgewood, there's no chance I was going to pick up the phone and call them again," Halpern says. "As soon as I heard there were negotiations with Ridgewood, they were in breach of our contract and we're not talking anymore—my lawyer will talk to you. Frankly, I was really pissed off that I was spending my nights and my Saturdays traipsing around in the snow for these guys, and they were already making a deal with Ridgewood Country Club."
By the new year, the Tour began edging its way out the door. While returning home from ski vacation in Colorado on Jan. 4, Halpern received a phone call in the Denver airport from Westchester Chairman Rod O'Connor, who said that the Tour had called and wanted to terminate its agreement with the club. In the formal letter from Moorhouse that followed a few days later, the reasons cited ranged from differences over the build-out to the small galleries, as well as a veiled reference to Westchester members having free rein over the club during tournament week.
In all, Moorhouse wrote, "I believe it simply is not possible to stage a tournament at the level we need to stage this event."
The Tour proposed a $1 million termination agreement to Westchester, but Halpern made it clear that the club would hold the Tour's feet to the fire for more than that. First came a letter to the membership spelling out the events of the previous few months, followed by a PR blitz in which the club's recent correspondence with the Tour was leaked to the press. Along the way, Ridgewood was pulled into the fray before Khowaylo had notified his members of the club's plans. Hence a hastily penned letter to Ridgewood members on Jan. 14 in which he acknowledged that yes, the club's board did agree to host the '08 tournament, but no, the deal wasn't final.
The days that followed were a case study in damage control. Westchester, spurned, defended its reputation. The Tour backpedaled from its letter to Westchester by saying that it hadn't come to a final decision on the '08 Barclays. Ridgewood insisted that it hadn't glommed onto a tournament that was still technically committed to another club. Finally, after sniping at one another directly and through the press for weeks, Westchester officials and PGA Tour executives found themselves together in Halpern's White Plains office on Martin Luther King Day. By Halpern's account, the possibility of litigation wasn't so much threatened as implied.
"There were three options," Halpern says. "One was, See you guys in August. Two was, Let's resolve this like gentlemen. The third was, I'm going to sue you."
The Tour came in with an offer to pay Westchester $1 million to terminate the remaining five-year agreement altogether. The Tour left agreeing to pay $1.1 million and give an additional $100,000 to the club's charities for the right to relocate in '08, while also agreeing to come back at least one more time before 2012. The new deal was a concession by the Tour that it had handled the matter clumsily, and with it also came an apology from Finchem to Westchester members.
Approaching this week's Barclays, with Woods out of the picture for the remainder of the year, the Tour says ticket sales at Ridgewood have been brisk and the membership has embraced the event. The subtext seems to be that the experience with this year's host has been everything that Westchester was not.
But every marriage has a honeymoon. As Westchester members might say, give it 41 years and then tell us if you still feel the same way.
Sam Weinman is the lead golf writer for The Journal News and LoHud.com.
