Golf Update: Tournament of Champions- Change in pairings accepted by PGA tour
PGA Tour will be implementing a slight change in pairing of players during the Tournament of Champions to accommodate the media partners.
Tournament of Champions will kick off on 6th January to mark the PGA season open. The event is scheduled in a format, which is comprised of pairs. There are two categories in the tournament. The first one has tour winners, players from the previous
money list, and toppers from Q-school and Nationwide Tour graduates. In the other category, there are players, who rank in top 20 of Official World Golf Ranking, but did fulfil any of the above criterions. Based on these two categories, PGA Tour divided the
players and assigned them tee timings in the first two days.
Initially, Graeme Mc Dowell was paired with Hunter Mahan and Jim Furyk was alongside Steve Stricker, but now there will be a slight change.
The Golf Channel, which is PGA tour’s official media partner for the event has proposed certain changes in the pairs to make things more interesting. According to their plan of action, 20 players from the 'A' list will tee with other group to gather maximum
limelight and hence increase the TV time. For instance, Tiger Woods, who is world number two will tee from front with the category B. This would make it easier for the Golf Channel to telecast them on back nine at peak hours alongside other channels.
The purpose of this exercise is to create a story line for the event so that sponsors can cash on the situation. Commenting on the issue Slugger White, the vice president of rules and competition for the tour said,
“We're just trying to take care of our TV partners. We are all in this together. We're trying to promote our sport."
On the other hand, another proposition was denied by the Players Advisory Council (PAC). The Golf Channel requested Rickie Fowler’s group to be changed: they wanted him to play alongside winners. However, PAC did not like the sound of it and refused the
idea by saying that Fowler had to earn that spot in order to play there.