 |
| 2011 Accenture Match Play Champion Luke Donals |
I see many flaws in the tournament, but I'll be the first to admit I have no idea how to fix them. The biggest problem in my mind is that on Saturday and Sunday, the television coverage is, in a word, boring. On both the weekend, there are only four golfers playing and simply not enough golf is ever shown. Instead we get to listen to the likes of Johnny Miller. That's a chore at the best of times, but made far worse when he needs to fill air time while players walk 300 yards to their drive, then each go through a seven minute pre-shot routine. As riveting as that may be to some, I only see it as an increased chance of me hearing about how great the '73 Open was. No thanks, I'd rather go clean out the neighbour's litter box.
And it gets even worse on Sunday, as only two of the players are actually playing for a championship. The other match, the '3rd place match' is to see who comes closest to winning without winning. It's like watching two players who just missed the cut in a regular tournament play a few extra rounds on the weekend to see who came closest to actually making it.
Another problem is the lack of star power in the finals. While we may have heard of Luke Donald and Martin Kaymer, and their stars are growing, they aren't the biggest names in the game. Yes, Tiger Woods has won the event three times, twice by taking down such heavy weights as Stewart Cink and David Toms. But he did have a victory against 4th seed Davis Love III in 2004, which was the only time two players in the top eight have ever met in the final. For the most part, the finals have featured battles between 6 and 14 seeds, or one year, a 24 and 62 seed. Basically, the final has never been that coveted match between Woods and Mickelson, or Woods and Singh. Instead it's Geoff Ogilvy against Paul Casey.
But that is out of the PGA Tour's control, they simply need the bigger names to play better. Of course I find it a little curious that few top-ranked layers have ever made it to the finals. One thought, although just pure speculation, is the length of the tournament. For some players, players who's main motivation is no longer money, the appeal of playing in a five-day tournament with six (formerly seven) rounds may just not be that high. I'm sure nobody would ever toss on purpose, but the effort may not always be there.
One improvement to the tournament has been the decision to only play 18 holes in the final match. Until this year, the final was 36 holes, stretching it out another five or six hours. It was epic watching Kevin Sutherland and Chris DiMarco duke it out for all 36 in 2002, which followed 2001's dynamite final between 55th ranked Steve Stricker and Pierre Fulke (if you're wondering who the 'fulke' Pierre is, you're not alone). The 36 hole format didn't add anything to the tournament and needlessly extended it to seven rounds. and the final to 10 hours.
Possible solutions that have been thrown around is having a smaller field, perhaps limiting the event to the top 32 or even 16 players. This would make for a shorter tournament and increase the chances of top players being around in the final. But this still leaves Sunday golf coverage with only two players competing and in fact, would make the first three days even worse, limiting the amount of golf that could be shown then. Perhaps the Tour could look at some kind of round-robin format. Or, perhaps match play just wasn't meant to be shown on television. Or much less likely, perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about.
By the way, the Masters is only five weeks away.
-TheRev
twitter.com/TheRevBW
thesportsroundup@gmail.com
Agree? Disagree? We want to hear from you! Click below to comment
No comments:
Post a Comment