golfrewind.com

Greetings ...

Imagine that you are a PGA Tour professional, and you have just put yourself among the Low 70 Scorers, plus any ties, after the first 36 holes (or 54 if Pebble Beach, or 72 if Bob Hope) of this week's tournament.

But just as soon as you sign your scorecard, some official comes by and says to you --

"Sorry to tell you, but some players in the last two groups just finished with birdies, so you are now outside the Low 50 Cut line, and as such will not be in this weekend's field. However, you will be credited with a Low 70 finish and receive $xx,xxx - the same as offered for 50th place - and it will count as official money."

WHOA - Excuse Me? Low 50 advance to weekend, but not the Low 70 - and yet you still get credit and official money equal to that for 50th place?

What the !#!'s going on here?

You've just been introduced a radical new concept - the Double Cut.

The proposed Double Cut concept works essentially like this --

In a given tournament, the traditional cut to the 70 scorers plus any ties would be made first. This would then be followed by a second cut to the Low 50 scorers plus any ties. The Low 50 and ties would advance to the remaining holes of play, with each pro guaranteed to receive at least as much money as is offered for 50th place. Each of those pros not among the Low 50 and ties would be credited with an official finish and receive an official money prize equal to that for 50th place.

To achieve the money payouts, a modified 50-place purse distribution system would replace the PGA Tour's current 70-place purse system. There would then be an extra purse to handle the 20-or-more remaining places, and this extra purse would worth at least 8% of the main purse.

And just what is 50th place worth in the modified purse. Let's say it's a $5-million event, with a 1st prize of $900,000. 50th place in such an event would be worth $20,000 - or 45 times less than what 1st is worth.

Compare that with 50th place in the PGA Tour's current 70-place system. In a $5-million event, it's $12,600, or 71.42857+ times less than what 1st is worth. And 70th place of course is worth $10,000 - 90 times less than what 1st is worth, and half of what 50th place - and each place beyond - would be worth in the modified 50-place system.

By now you realize that an odd thing is being proposed - to give out more money to all the players who successfully make the Low 70 Cut, while keeping 20-or-more of them from playing on the weekend!

Why in the world would the PGA Tour - or any other tour - want to even consider doing this?

For the answer to that, you are invited to click-on to this link --

Tale of the Double Cut and 50-Place-Plus Purse System

-- it will repeat much of what's just been said here, with added details. Plus you'll be able to read the reasons why this concept might be attractive to the pro tours.

As a bonus, the web-page presentation will use each event in the actual 2006 PGA Tour season to illustrate how the Double Cut concept might play out.

I don't think this will fly. One, very complicated, two, it violates the spirit of the competition. If this mess ever becomes the norm, TV golf will lose at least one viewer, me.

Overall, a good suggestion to speed up the game, but is this approach going to increase TV viewership or just shorten the window that Golf is on tv. I think the latter.

I am always interested in reading ideas that are aimed at solving Golf's problems or improving Golf's fan attraction. This approach seems to attempt to speed up golf play by moving less through a drain than the current approach, but at the expense of allowing players around 7 - 10 shots back from improving their relative position and their long-term play improvement. The mentality of this suggestion and even the "Fed Ex" cup starting in 2007 is that we only care about the top players (which may be true for most fans).

I am not sure Golf will ever increase mass appeal than it already has. The cost of the sport and accessibility to everyone is limiting. The sport has no contact and rarely ever has even a dispute. Our society today loses attention after only a few seconds, and loves "fights". Golf is a gentlemen's game and is probably headed in a different direction than society (unfortunately).

I don't see a reason to cut the number of guys playing the weekend by that much. As several guys have shown us in the past few years, you can come from the brink of the cut line to a stern challenge or even a win with a good weekend.

I think it is a terrible idea.

The main reason is because those guys who struggle to make the cut, wouldn't get the added experience of playing at the weekend.

Also, it would decrease the chances of Michelle Wie playing at the weekend, and doing that would be bad for golf. Actually maybe they should consider increasing the cut line to the top 100 players. There's an idea.

Once a chain has been broken, it is broken.

Don't worry there is a very important MW topic coming up.

Last year Brad Faxon just made the cut at the Buick Championship at Hartford. He came storming (In the rain ) back Sunday to post a 61 and snuck in and won the tournament in a one hole playoff. It made for some rather compelling golf to watch. I taped the tournament and still play it back from time to time.

A second cut could be made after the 3rd round - to say 36 players except where they're within a set number of strokes, say 6 of the lead in which case they would play. This will take out the dew sweepers and there'll be more opportunities to just watch Tiger - oh wait, that happens now!

There used to be a second cut at the Open, but too many Americans whined about having to go home on a Saturday night.

So, just to clarify. We are talking about paying more money to the guys who just make the cut. Presumably that's going to come from the higher finishes. We are also talking about preventing them from playing the weekend. They play 2-balls on the weekend most of the time anyway, so it's not going to make the field any quicker. Just a bit shorter and TV will still concentrate on the leaders/Tiger. And you remove the cinderella story like ce me golf described Brad Faxon pulling off.

I wouldn't describe myself as a big fan of this idea. I hate the idea of rewarding mediocrity, which is what you propose. If you really want to make life more exciting, pay more for first place and less for everything else. If a $5 million purse was split like this:

1st: $2,500,000
2nd: $1,000,000
3rd: $500,000
4th: $300,000
5th: $200,000
6th: $100,000
7th: $70,000
8th: $60,000
9th: $50,000
10th: $45,000
etc

Two things would happen. One, Chris DiMarco would actually have to win something to place highly on the money list and two, tournaments would be so much more interesting at the end as the players would actually be playing for something. Even the top ones.

We could make it so the guy who makes the cut and finishes last gets his meals comped for the week

Ahhh. Now that might be good.

brianf

Label me as not a fan of this idea.
If someone makes the top 70, at least he has a chance to improve his place over the next 2 days. This top 50 idea is going to steal that chance from players who may not have had particularly good rounds the first 2.