PGA Tour's best gearing up for big-money event
| • | Another profitable ace for Maui top cop |
| • | Lee moves on at PGA 'Q' School |
| • | Second-ranked UNLV in UH tourney field |
By Bill Kwon
The PGA Tour ends its official season this weekend with the elitist of elite golf events, The Tour Championship, at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
Advertiser library photo
There is also the Southern Farm Bureau Classic in Mississippi for those who did not qualify for the Tour Championship, but will still have Georgia on their minds.
Tiger Woods, above, has been a staple at the season-ending Tour Championship.
How elite is the season-ending Tour Championship? It's truly creme de la creme.
You've got to be among the top 30 on the money list to qualify. Money talks, but even earning $1 million on the PGA Tour won't cut it.
Neither will just winning a tournament.
Among those who won't get to play with Tiger Woods and his A-minus list of companions are 14 tournament winners and 30 players who earned $1 million or more in 2002. Brad Faxon is on the latter list. He earned $1.7 million but finished $35,692 short of Scott McCarron for the final coveted spot in the 2002 Tour Championship field.
The event is so elite that even defending champions aren't exempt. Last year's playoff winner, Mike Weir, is a no-show for being 77th on the 2002 money list with $844,000. And he won't finish any higher, having decided to skip the tour's other season-ending tournament. Faxon, though, will try to take out his frustrations there.
And only the rich will get richer because the 30 players in the no-cut Tour Championship will divvy up the $5 million purse with the winner cashing a $900,000 paycheck. Even finishing last, in 30th place, pays $81,000.
Woods, who won only $6.7 million with one tournament to go (compared to his winning $9.1 million two years ago), is the player to beat as usual. His five victories led the tour this year with Phil Mickelson, K.J. Choi, Len Mattiace, Ernie Els, Rich Beem and Jerry Kelly being the only other multiple winners.
Advertiser library photos
My sentimental choice is Kelly. Who can forget his stunning victory in the Sony Open in Hawai'i? Kelly's win began the record parade of 17 first-time winners on the PGA Tour this year. The previous high was 14 in 1991. Kelly went on to win the Western Open as well.
Joining Woods this year in the elite field are first-time Tour winners (from top) Jerry Kelly, K.J. Choi and Len Mattiace.
Joining Kelly in the Tour Championship as first-time winners are Choi, Mattiace, who had gone 0-for-219 before capturing the Nissan Open, Chris Riley, John Rollins and Charles Howell III. But the odds are against a first-time winner doing well, according to PGA Tour statistics.
Of the 133 players who have competed in the Tour Championship since it was first held in 1987, only 44 have finished in the top 10 in their debut, and only 26 in the top five. Tom Watson is the only first-timer to win but that was in 1987 when everyone was playing in the event for the first time.
Eleven first-time winners won't have an opportunity to play, further reducing the odds. They will be on the outside looking in as six 2002 non-winners — Davis Love III, Fred Funk, David Toms, Steve Lowery, Kenny Perry and Robert Allenby — will get to putt for more dough, thanks to their money rankings.
Funk posted four runner-up finishes, while Toms and Lowery each helped themselves to seconds three times. Perry moved into the top-30 list after his showing in last week's Buick Challenge.
Love, who has won only once in the last four years, can thank his back-to-back runner-up finishes in the Greater Hartford Open and the Western Open, in which he banked $800,000 of his $1.86 million for the year.
If the Tour Championship is an elite event, so is the winners-only Mercedes Championships at Kapalua next January. With already 37 winners, it will be the largest Mercedes field ever, although Phil Mickelson has informed The Associated Press that he will skip the event for the second year in a row.
One of the winless six in the Tour Championship will get one last crack at making it to Maui along with a non-winner in the opposite-event State Farm Bureau Classic. Just ask defending champion Cameron Beckman, who made the Mercedes field with his breakthrough PGA victory in Mississippi last year.
There are other perks to be had in that tournament, so it's hardly a who-cares event despite its secondary billing.
The players are also jockeying for a top-125 money exempt list and an invitation to the 2003 Masters for making the top 40. The top 30 get into the U.S. Open, so Faxon would like nothing better than to move up in the money rankings and perhaps get a trip to Maui as well. You know, he will double up and play the Sony Open, which he won in 2001, as well, the following week after Kapalua.
So there is a lot to play for in the State Farm Bureau Classic. It's just that they won't be playing for as much money as the Tour Championship.
Besides, the Tour Championship has got something else going for it: Tiger Woods.
It's gotten to the point in golf, unfortunately, that when he's not playing, a tournament's luster is diminished.
Hawai'i golf fans, so far, have been fortunate in seeing Tiger twice a year in the Mercedes Championships and the PGA Grand Slam of Golf at Po'ipu Bay, Kaua'i.
Now, if he would only play in the Sony Open one of these years.
Bill Kwon can be reached at bkwon@aloha.net.
