Tuesday, August 10, 1999
High-paid golfers dissing fans with Ryder Cup
money issue
By Skip Bayless
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — The Showdown in Chicago happens Tuesday at Medinah
Country Club.
This time, Tiger Woods and David Duval are teammates going
after a purse of about $63 million. Their favored opponents: millions
of fans who would live in poverty for the ability to play golf
the way Woods and Duval can.
I'm one of them.
I know, as a lifelong fan and infernally frustrated golfer,
how I reacted to Monday's big, bad talk about Tuesday's confrontation
between PGA of America officials and America's Ryder Cup members.
I sighed and thought, “No wonder so many people have become
pro wrestling fans.”
To my vague knowledge, the wealthiest pro wrestlers don't threaten
to boycott the sport's biggest events over money. Though they
might literally shoot the finger at fans, they don't alienate
crazed customers with rich-should-get-richer complaints. Has it
come to this? Pro wrestling, the last greed-free bastion?
Tiger and Duval and other terribly wealthy golfers are shooting
the dreaded digit at their fans in a much more damaging way. They
are also shooting themselves in their Foot-Joys, all over a few
more diamonds in the rough.
Golf's golden goose, only three or four years old, just took
one of Tiger's 350-yard screamers right in the beak.
For that matter, wrestlers don't whine about lumpy mats. Monday,
golf's greatest groused about greens spotted brown by Chicago's
recent heat wave. What next? Pros boycott PGA, citing brown greens?
But I've always sympathized with the pre-majors complaints
of the tortured souls who play golf for a living. I can appreciate
how burned-out greens might vary the speed or alter the path of
delicate putts.
I can because I still attempt to play the world's hardest game.
Golf is played by many of its fans, from those who can break 80
to those over 80. We might not be able to hit a 2-iron to save
our souls, but we at least have an idea how mysteriously hard
this game can be. We are reminded every time we play.
Our awe for these guys is constantly renewed. Don't they realize
how much we bleed for them?
Your basic football, baseball and basketball fans often forget
how hard those games can be. Meanwhile, they have been reminded
of their idols' (and owners') greed by strike after love-killing
strike.
But until recently, golf has been the purest sport. Golfers
paid their way to tournaments and played without guarantees. America
at its most beautiful: The better they played, the more money
they won. No negotiations. No holdouts. No upfront bonuses.
I loved this game.
Then Tiger happened and golf got IMG'd. The next thing let's
do, let's outlaw all the agents. Client-controlling agents began
to control golf just the way they've infiltrated the other greed-eaten
sports.
Golf was selling and the fans with the most disposable income
were buying everything from plutonium drivers to computer-programmed
putters.
As Fred Couples said Monday: “We get paid for going to
the mall, to the restaurant, to Europe. Not that we shouldn't
get paid, but . . .”
But Couples remembers what it was like to pay his way and putt
for his supper. Couples knows that golf, and not its golden goose,
is in danger of laying the next egg.
Thanks to too many agents, too many golf stars have lost all
perspective on what made their sport so appealing in the first
place.
The Ryder Cup was their Olympics--their quickest cut-off-the-dogleg
path into their customers' hearts. America versus anyone will
sell as long as it's packaged in flag-waving, love-of-country
purity. The dirty little secret is that the Olympics have been
IMG'd too, but Wheaties-eating America doesn't care to know that.
Then here came Tiger and Duval speaking the spoiled-rotten
truth: If the Ryder Cup generates $63 million, they said, they
want a whole lot more than a $5,000 stipend to play and to appear
at all the corporate festivities. Duval, who has yet to play in
a Ryder Cup, even invoked the “b” word (boycott) before
backing off.
But Duval dripped sarcasm all over golf America by saying,
“I just might take that ($5,000) and retire.”
As if he couldn't take the $4 million or $5 million he'll make
this year in endorsements and “Showdowns at Sherwoods”
alone and do just that.
It was enough to turn your greens brown.
Obviously, Tiger and Duval have realized millions from the
last couple of Ryder Cups. Their cups have runneth over from all
the feel-good exposure they've generated from this event.
I won't even mention the Ryder Cup incentive bonuses in their
endorsement contracts and the money they're guaranteed (from the
last-place $25,000 to the winner's $1 million) for playing the
new NEC Invitational.
But Tuesday our Ryder Cuppers will argue that they want control
of the proceeds, even if it's to designate them for the charities
of their choosing. The PGA's Jim Awtrey will restate his case
that the proceeds are going back into funding tournaments and
a players' retirement fund, along with the PGA's charities.
The stars will get their way. They are the show. But they'll
need help removing all the resentment they've created. Ryder rents
trucks.
(c) 1999, Chicago Tribune.
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