Tiger Woods did not show up at Pebble Beach. Attendance and other numbers used to measure success will be down this year, and tournament director Ollie Nutt won’t have to look hard to place the blame.
The weather.
Woods hasn’t been to the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am since 2002, yet officials somehow have managed to hand out a trophy, pay out more than $5-million in prize money and still provide for their local charities.
Ditto for the Verizon Heritage at Hilton Head, an idyllic locale that Woods hasn’t been to since 1999 and probably won’t return to soon. Stanford Financial has taken over sponsorship in Memphis, even though there’s a better chance of getting Elvis than Tiger. The world’s number one player hasn’t been to the Honda Classic since he was a 17-year-old amateur.
In fact, Woods never has played nine longtime events on the US PGA Tour since turning pro, and all of them are still on the schedule.
Jack Vickers might call that a miracle.
The Denver oilman pulled the plug on his beloved International tournament, the one with the modified Stableford scoring system played on the picturesque Castle Pines Golf Club, where he treated every guest like royalty except for those meddlesome thunderstorms.
The problem was the tour’s price tag ($8-million) and no sponsor to pick up the bill for an event played around the Fourth of July holiday. Vickers was quick to attribute the demise to Woods, the star attraction on the US PGA Tour who last played there in 1999.
”If he shows, everything changes,” Vickers said. ”You’ve got a one-man show out there right now that is the big difference.”
He’s right about the US PGA Tour being a one-man show. When Woods plays, crowds are crammed behind the ropes of every fairway, TV ratings spike, and everyone goes home happy.
And when he doesn’t?
”We’d love to have him,” Nutt said at Pebble Beach. ”But it’s been four years since he’s been here, and our attendance is going up every year. This year with the weather, we’ll be off a little bit. But last year we did 70% in advance sales, and that was even before we knew if he was coming. You can’t build an event around any one person.”
Vickers never realised that.
Pebble Beach is a special place, a special tournament. Even without Woods, the crowd turns out — especially on Saturday ‒- to see the antics of Bill Murray, to hear one-liners from fellow comedian George Lopez, to coo over actor Kevin Costner.
Vickers, however, believed the scenery was just as spectacular in the mountains, and his course was good enough for a US Open.
He wanted Tiger.
He made excuses when Tiger didn’t show up, usually blaming the US PGA Tour for his spot on the schedule, whether it was a week after the US PGA Championship, a week before or even two weeks before.
Too bad Vickers never made as big of a stink over who he had, not who he didn’t. Phil Mickelson played the International every year but one since 1992. Ernie Els only skipped in 2005 when he was on crutches. Sergio Garcia and Retief Goosen missed only one year, and that was when the US PGA Championship was held a week later at a new site in Whistling Straits.
How many tournaments would love to have all those guys? Or any of them?
Not having Tiger didn’t help the International, but the fact cannot be ignored that Woods plays only about 18 times a year — the same number as Jack Nicklaus at that stage in his career -‒ and those tournaments he skips are still in business.
”Those weeks he doesn’t play, we have a great tournament,” US PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said, drinking from a half-full glass. He noted the two tournaments that raised the most charity money in the last 12 months were Phoenix and the Texas Open, ”and neither of them has seen Tiger lately”.
Vickers’ biggest mistake was not misplacing his trust in trying to attract one player, but turning down a spot in the tour’s new FedEx Cup playoffs.
It would have been a far better spot on the schedule than where the International is now. ‒ Sapa-AP