The only excitement during the four days of the PGA Tour's opening event lasted about 15 minutes. That was when the leader, Geoff Ogilvy, had just a one stroke lead after four bogeys on the front nine.
Within 15 minutes he had eagled the par 5 ninth and then went on a rampage over the closing nine to pull away by a wide margin.
Take nothing away from the victory. As Ben Hogan said to Nick Faldo, who had asked the maestro how to win the US Open: "Shoot the lowest score".
Ogilvy thoroughly deserved the win.
This blogger's question is: How can this tournament be improved? The format has become, quite honestly, rather boring. Perhaps altering the entry list to include representatives from each of the previous year's events would at least broaden the field. If each individual winner cannot be bothered (injuries excepted) to show up, invite those players who finished second - including ties.
The purse payout could be arranged differently. Being a small field should provide the opportunity to increase the winner's share to 40% from the usual 18%. Even the elite players might be impressed with $2m to the winner.
This won't happen in my lifetime but if the event was a "Winner Take All" affair with the also rans getting appearance money of $10,000, might that really get the elite's competitive juices flowing.
One can only dream.......
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment