First off, Happy New Year and welcome back to PGA.com! Traffic on a golf web site in November and December is about as thick as , whose 15 minutes of fame was still a good 90 seconds longer than the PGA Tour offseason.
History shows the 2007 season ended 60 days ago, but the time lapse seems more reminiscent of the "Remembrances of Love" skit on Saturday Night Live featuring MC Hammer as basketball legend and famed philanderer Wilt Chamberlain, who reflects on "Cheryl - number 13,906, but in my heart she was number 2,078." After she tells him in their first (and only) conversation that she'd seen the movie "Cabaret," he tells her he thinks he's falling for her: "Oh, Cheryl, when we're together, it just feels so right. Remember the time we talked about 'Cabaret?'" (Side note: I'm very disappointed in America's slacking youth for not making video of this sketch available anywhere on the web.)
So while we're still on the rebound from 2007, the 2008 season begins at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, which - according to our sister web site PGATOUR.com - is being played at Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii. It's a general rule of thumb in geography that the more exotic a locale, the more commas it takes when writing it out. This corollary goes back to Columbus, who got back on board the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria (translation: three commas) and kept sailing to San Salvador Island, Bahamas, Greater Antilles, West Indies after originally making landfall in Dubuque, Iowa.
But Maui apparently isn't exotic enough to make this week's field include the names "Woods, Tiger" and "Mickelson, Phil." Both plan to start their 2008 engines not in luxury at the Mercedes (for winners only) but in a midsize - the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, a public course that Woods privately owns, having won there half of the 10 times he's teed it up, including the last 3. While Kapalua's a perk for chaps like Chopra, Choi, and Weekley, it doesn't mean Boo to Woods and Mickelson, who want for nothing except to control their own schedules, which - if we've learned anything in the last year - they most certainly do.
You'll recall that those two were the most vocal about the Tour shortening its season, which is ironic because neither has historically played very much after Labor Day. Still, Commissioner Tim Finchem complied, concocting the FedEx Cup and the subsequent Fall Series as an alternative. Woods and Mickelson expressed their appreciation by each skipping 1 of the 4 late-summer playoff events, only to play elsewhere later in the year (Mickelson in Asia, Woods at his own Target World Challenge in southern California). Now, despite an offseason that was 2 months longer, neither player is "ready" for the Mercedes-Benz this week.
Which is perfectly within their rights as independent contractors. After all, the Tour makes more money off those two than they do off the Tour. But that should be the moral of the story for Finchem and whoever eventually succeeds him: you can lead your horses to water, but you can't make them fly over it for a tournament when they'd rather be home with their families watching the NFL playoffs. (The major sports books in Vegas estimate the chances of Mickelson, a rabid football fan, attending the San Diego Chargers' home game against Tennessee Sunday somewhere between 100 and 4000%.)
What does this rebellion in absentia say about the state of the PGA Tour? Nothing that we didn't already know, specifically that this is Tiger's Tour more than ever. Mickelson's a distant but definitive second, wielding considerable power of his own. Each will come and go as he pleases and dazzle us plenty.
It's a little like The Rat Pack with Mickelson playing the role of Dean Martin. A bona fide, A-List leading man. A superstar in his own right who'd get top billing anywhere he played...except over Sinatra. That's Tiger, the Chairman of the Board, sans the blue eyes. (For fun, you can fill out the rest of the Pack. I've got Ernie Els as Peter Lawford, Vijay as Sammy Davis, Jr., and Furyk as Joey Bishop. In the spirit of New Year's Eve, you can extend the game to include the entire cast of the original Ocean's Eleven. Elin Woods would be Angie Dickinson, Rory Sabbatini could reprise Shirley MacLaine's drunken cameo, etc.)
Truth is, the Tour has always scratched and clawed for attention this time of year. They used to say the season didn't begin in earnest until the Masters. Greg Norman scooched it back a bit, declaring Doral as the unofficial opener in his heyday. Now, it's whenever Tiger steps to the first tee.
If any of this week's 31 competitors feel slighted by this reality and the media spotlight's reduced wattage, they can take solace in the fact that the $1.1 million dollar first place check will still cash and even more that their chances of winning are enhanced dramatically by Woods' and Mickelson's absence.
So ready or not, the 2008 PGA Tour season begins as this week's column ends. Hard to believe. Remember when we talked about "Cabaret?"
Grant Boone is a husband, father, broadcaster, and journalist based in Texas. An archive of his columns can be found here. He can be contacted at pgagrant@hotmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed here do not reflect those of PGA.com or The PGA of America.
