Tour De Loot Goes The Extra Mile

The more generous call it the Second Season. Others refer to it as the Silly Season. The PGA Tour calls it unofficial money, yet the banks cash the checks just the same. By any name, it’s a gold mine for golf’s best players.

Crank up the TV and settle into a comfortable chair. Six weeks of golf tournaments that matter only to the wallet are about to begin.

Call it the Rich Get Richer Tour. More than $12 million is at stake in at least 13 off-season events. And that cash count doesn’t include the appearance fees some of the overseas contests pay.

On the surface it appears to be a win-win situation for the players, the professional game and the corporations who get a glamourous stage with big names to showcase their products.

Among the events coming up are: the Lincoln-Mercury Kapaula International, the MasterCard Grand Slam of Golf, the Franklin Templeton Shark Shootout, the Nedbank Million Dollar Golf Challenge, the JCPenney Classic, the Diners Club Matches and the Office Depot Father/Son Challenge.

Don’t forget the Skins Game, the World Cup of Golf, the Johnnie Walker Super Tour and the ever-popular Hassan II Trophy.

And virtually everyone gets a slice of the TV pie with CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN and Turner Sports all airing at least one event.

Who knows, there might even be some good golf.

So what’s the downside to all of this?

For the players: burnout and overexposure.

For the PGA Tour: weakened fields in early season events as players who competed in November and December use January and February to rest.

Last year, Corey Pavin won $1.3 million on the PGA Tour and then picked up a total of $1.5 million in the Skins Game, the Grand Slam of Golf and the Million Dollar Challenge.

Pavin played the first event of the 1996 season - the Mercedes Championship - and then skipped the next six, missing the entire West Coast swing.

“Players don’t say they are rusty anymore,” Pavin said at the time. “They say they are tired.”

Others agree.

“I wish I could take about two months off,” Mark O’Meara said when he showed up for the first tournament of the year. “It is a 12-month cycle out here. You have to be careful.”

O’Meara said he rejected “more than $60,000 and less than $120,000” guaranteed money to play in the Hassan II Trophy in Morocco last year.

The silliest of the events this year might be the Johnnie Walker Super Tour. Colin Montgomerie, Ian Woosnam, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh are among eight players who will play four courses in six days in Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok and Manila in the $350,000 event.

Then there is the Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf - the only event that starts in one year and ends in another. The match play event concludes Jan. 4-5 in Scottsdale, Ariz., pitting the four winners from the United States, Europe, Japan and Africa/ Australasia. The competition began in February.

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem is clearly aware that off-season events could pose some concerns for the professional game down the road.

“The PGA Tour has to re-evaluate some of the competitions in the fourth quarter” of the year, Finchem said in his season-opening speech.

“Scheduling is a little crowded,” Finchem said.

The threat, as always, is with the bottom line.

“If it hasn’t already, it will detract from the financial realities of the TV package for the early part of the season,” Finchem said.

“Television revenues could disintegrate to where they are not on the air,” Finchem said. “We have to deal with it.”

Finchem took a step toward dealing with the game worldwide at the Presidents Cup in September when he announced the formation of the PGA Tours International Federation.

He said the group would come up with three world championship events - a stroke play, a match play and a two-man team competition - to be announced after an extensive consultation process involving players and officials.

“We are not talking about a World Tour if your definition of a World Tour is a small group of players playing against themselves, isolated from competition on a regular basis in opposition to or in competition with our basic structure,” Finchem said. “That is something we are not interested in.”

One thing is clear: Nothing will happen until after the 1998 season when the PGA Tour’s television deals expire and new packages can be negotiated with new events.

In the meantime, crank up that TV and tune in the Great Shark World Cup Skins Million Dollar Diners Club Office Depot Shootout.