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Fix the PGA Tour?

Maybe the PGA Tour should let the tournaments offer appearance money like the Euro Tour does. That sure is an easy way to ensure bigger names appear at your event, even if you can only pony up the money for Tiger or Phil once every couple of years. If they are not on planes chasing the fees in Europe and Dubai, maybe they can squeeze in an extra event or two domestically.

Fixing the FedEx Cup is a whole different topic. If you're going to have that be a season championship prize, I don't think it's right for 30 guys to have a chance to win it based on a single event. With the history of all the major events, I'm not sure how you increase it's importance to make it relevant as "playoffs". Instead of selling it as a season-long trophy, maybe keep the structure the way it is now, but give the Tour Championship a $15 million purse so that the guys will economically want to participate/win (but do away with the FedEx Cup Trophy concept).
 
Bury 5 Landmines somewhere on the course each Sunday.

Come on......you know you'ld watch...
 
Puttin4Bird said:
Great thread! Here goes:

I've been thinking a lot about this and the first thing I would do as PGA Tour commissioner would be to require that in every 4 year period every pro plays each and every stop on the PGA Tour (except opposite field events) at least one time. Imagine the shot in the arm some of these events would get if they were guaranteed to have Tiger Woods every 4th year at minimum, heck this is completely discounting a lot of huge names on the TOUR like Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and others. This would be HUGE for events! Not only is my idea realistic enough to be implemented I honestly feel that it should be, every 4th year, c'mon that's not that much but it would help the events tremendously.
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you would get my vote....If I had one!!!
 
The addition of microphones to the caddies would be cool because I love when you hear Phil and Bones or Tiger and Steve talking about how they are going to play a shot. Shot tracker on majority of shots would be cool as well. When it was set up at the British Open on the tee box @ 17 it was amazing to see how they worked the ball and how the winds were affecting that tee shot. I think those are more on the networks then the tour itself.

I would like to see more prime time golf. I would also like to see more marquee pairings. Torre Pines next year day 1 and 2. Tiger, Phil, Furyk. If done in prime time golf, they could tee off around 2 EST on Thursday and then 6 EST on Friday. This would only work for West Coast events, but I think they should do it more often.
 
I think it would be good to highlight the personalities of the players more. I think Twitter has been a great starting ground for this. I know that since all the golfers started social networking more, I have been more interested in Poulter, Westwood, Bubba, Ricky and Stewart Cink. People get into the drama of things for good or for bad. They made Brett Farve look like an indecisive fool and I bet that bit of off the field attention drew a lot more viewers to Minnesota games.

The counter argument to this is that Tiger is the most popular athlete in the world, and he is also one of the most closed off people in the world.

Edit: I think that having the players play every event over a 4 year period is a fantastic idea! I wonder if we get a lot of responses in this thread if the PGA will pay attention?
 
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Puttin4Bird said:
Great thread! Here goes:

I've been thinking a lot about this and the first thing I would do as PGA Tour commissioner would be to require that in every 4 year period every pro plays each and every stop on the PGA Tour (except opposite field events) at least one time. Imagine the shot in the arm some of these events would get if they were guaranteed to have Tiger Woods every 4th year at minimum, heck this is completely discounting a lot of huge names on the TOUR like Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and others. This would be HUGE for events! Not only is my idea realistic enough to be implemented I honestly feel that it should be, every 4th year, c'mon that's not that much but it would help the events tremendously.
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My thought is the same. This would be number one on my list.
 
Make the gallery ropes out-of-bounds markers. If a fan that is outside the ropes still gets hit by an errant ball, the fan receives $100,000, instead of a stupid signed glove! :banana:
 
Something certainly needs to be put in place that forces the top 10 or 20 players to play more events, or at least limit the amount of smaller events they can avoid! Just because they are top rated doesn't give them the right to only play the events that offer the bigger payouts. The smaller events deserve the right to promote their event based on top players in the field!!!
 
I would like to see some kind of top 32 man match play event for some kind of pga tour champion besides fedex cup.
 
Keep the suggestions coming. Certainly more want to be the commish.
 
I don't how this would work but it would be cool if they could implement some kind of "intent system." If you break a rule, on accident, and it does not give you a advantage, penalty strokes should not be given. Obviously this would have a lot of flaws and debates about "intent" , but it would be cool.
 
JB said:
Keep the suggestions coming. Certainly more want to be the commish.
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i like the recommendation of making the fedex cup winner a little more interesting. why not take the top 32 (i think) that go into the tour championship and make it like the WGC match play event. i hate how only 5 people or so going into that have the chance to win the fedex cup and the whopping 10 mil that go with it. have a match play bracket and let the lone winner take home the bacon. to me, it's like the ncaa tournament. even casual college basketball fans love the tourny in march. i think it would make for great ratings, well, until tiger gets knocked out. catch 22 i suppose.

i also think it would be cool to allow fans to have some input on day 1 and day 2 pairings. maybe throw out 16 guys on pgatour.com, open it up to a poll and let fans determine the pairings.
 
I would institute a strict shot clock. Nothing makes me change the channel faster than watching some pro golfer take 10 minutes trying to decide whether to hit a splash or blast out of a greenside bunker. There would have to be some kinks to work out. But I would definately make there be some sort of punishment for taking too much time.
 
I would have a yearly tournament that would include the PGA, LGPA & Senior tour top 25 rated players. Of course each tour would play from a different set of tees to make it fair. It would be similar to what was on recently however it would be a 3 or 4 day individual tournament. The winner of the tournament would get a Masters Invite.
 
I really like the idea about miking players and caddies. I love to watch golf over the weekend, but I don't gain a lot of insight about course management from the players side. I don't think you have to mike every player, but just do a few each tournament. It makes NFL football really good to hear from players and coaches perspective.
 
TC said:
i like the recommendation of making the fedex cup winner a little more interesting. why not take the top 32 (i think) that go into the tour championship and make it like the WGC match play event. i hate how only 5 people or so going into that have the chance to win the fedex cup and the whopping 10 mil that go with it. have a match play bracket and let the lone winner take home the bacon. to me, it's like the ncaa tournament. even casual college basketball fans love the tourny in march. i think it would make for great ratings, well, until tiger gets knocked out. catch 22 i suppose.

i also think it would be cool to allow fans to have some input on day 1 and day 2 pairings. maybe throw out 16 guys on pgatour.com, open it up to a poll and let fans determine the pairings.
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What would be the incentive of being #1 then? The reward for having a fantastic season is that you have a chance to win the FedEx Cup. I would hate for Jim Furyk or Dustin Johnson lose to whoever was the 32 ranked golfer. have that guy get on a hot streak and win the tournament even though he never won the rest of the year.
 
blugold said:
What would be the incentive of being #1 then? The reward for having a fantastic season is that you have a chance to win the FedEx Cup. I would hate for Jim Furyk or Dustin Johnson lose to whoever was the 32 ranked golfer. have that guy get on a hot streak and win the tournament even though he never won the rest of the year.
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I see both sides. But isnt that what kind of happened this year? Matt Kuchar got hot, won a tournament (in Fedex Cup only) and almost won the whole thing because of it?

And in reality, isnt that the same thing in all playoffs? Wild Card teams win quite a bit.
 
blugold said:
What would be the incentive of being #1 then? The reward for having a fantastic season is that you have a chance to win the FedEx Cup. I would hate for Jim Furyk or Dustin Johnson lose to whoever was the 32 ranked golfer. have that guy get on a hot streak and win the tournament even though he never won the rest of the year.
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who cares what the incentive would be? the idea for me as commish would be to generate more tv ratings and more money. i lose tons of interest around the tour championship b/c only 4 or 5 guys really have a chance to win. ernie els had an awesome 2010 and he didn't have a shot at the tour championship b/c his hot streak took place in the florida swing and not the fall swing. how is that fair to him?
 
I don't see a problem with someone who was steady enough all season to earn their spot in the playoffs only to get hot for the last couple of events, snag a victory and end up winning it all, it does happen a ton in other major sports playoffs.

Other ideas as PGA Tour commissioner would definitely be anything to help get more fan interaction, and I really like the idea of setting up the courses tighter to help keep courses relevant and tough on these guys. Nobody wants to see every course have to be 8500 yds in order to be a challenge. Look at old style tracks like Congressional, Cog Hill, Harbor Town, etc...these courses are classic courses that have been mainstays on the tour for years, classic golf at it's best if you ask me.
 
I would give the Fed Ex Cup more hype, probably switch it up to make it worth while more during the season.. I still find it very bland and by the time the cup rolls around everyone doesn't really seem into it. I would give the winner a reward for the following year.
 
TC said:
who cares what the incentive would be? the idea for me as commish would be to generate more tv ratings and more money. i lose tons of interest around the tour championship b/c only 4 or 5 guys really have a chance to win. ernie els had an awesome 2010 and he didn't have a shot at the tour championship b/c his hot streak took place in the florida swing and not the fall swing. how is that fair to him?
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Life/sports isn't fair. He got hot at the wrong time. I would agree that the "playoff" tournaments count for way too much.
 
Dent said:
I would give the Fed Ex Cup more hype, probably switch it up to make it worth while more during the season.. I still find it very bland and by the time the cup rolls around everyone doesn't really seem into it. I would give the winner a reward for the following year.
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Like $10,000,000?
 
Dent said:
I would give the Fed Ex Cup more hype, probably switch it up to make it worth while more during the season.. I still find it very bland and by the time the cup rolls around everyone doesn't really seem into it. I would give the winner a reward for the following year.
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blugold said:
Like $10,000,000?
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I kind of agree with Dent on this one. Casual fans still say "oh the rich get richer" and the die hards look at it like a shame. I found this years pretty interesting and think they might have gotten the points close to being right for the 1st time. But they really do need to pump it up more throughout the season.
 
JB said:
I kind of agree with Dent on this one.
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I agree that the "playoffs" are worth way too much. There should be more fan exemptions into the Majors. There was no reason why guys like JB Holmes, Bubba Watson, and Rickie Fowler missed the Masters. How much would it have been to follow that threesome around for a day.
 
blugold said:
I agree that the "playoffs" are worth way too much. There should be more fan exemptions into the Majors. There was no reason why guys like JB Holmes, Bubba Watson, and Rickie Fowler missed the Masters. How much would it have been to follow that threesome around for a day.
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Yeah, that would have been great. Other than with JB Holmes in the group, it would have taken 7 hours. He gives my initials a bad name in slow play...hehe
 
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