Mike Nadel: PGA Playoffs? That's a good one!
Remember when the Chicago Bulls were preparing to play the Indiana Pacers in the 1998 Eastern Conference finals and Michael Jordan, claiming he was a little tired, decided to skip the series?
And who could forget Joe Carter winning the 1993 World Series for Toronto with a home run, looking into the television camera and saying, "That was swell, but I can think of at least four other baseball events I'd rather win"?
What? You don't remember? That's because such scenarios are so utterly absurd they could never happen.
Except on the PGA Tour.
Golf's honchos have decided to invent drama, whether we buy into it or not. They have come up with something they call "Playoffs" -- with a capital "P" -- even if the four-week FedEx Cup doesn't resemble anything even a casual sports fan would identify with actual playoffs.
In the process, Tour honchos have ruined the Western Open.
Wait. It's not even the Western Open any more, brushing aside more than a century of history. It's now the BMW Championship, and Thursday's opening round had all the buzz of a WNBA exhibition game.
"Yeah, it's disappointing," Tiger Woods said of the tiny gallery that followed him and playing partners Steve Stricker and K.J. Choi. "There are a lot of sporting events going on. The date has changed. Kids are back in school. It's a totally different atmosphere. This is about what we see for the pro-am."
The problem wasn't the golf, which was quite good. Woods made six birdies, including a couple of dazzlers, to finish his round at Cog Hill's Dubsdread course at 4-under, three behind leader Jonathan Byrd. Stricker and Choi, two of the world's best, each carded 3-under. (For more on Thursday's play -- including yours truly inadvertently messing things up for Stricker -- visit my blog at www.thebaldesttruth.com <http://www.thebaldesttruth.com> .)
The problem's the event itself.
In a desperate attempt to make the season matter after the PGA Championship in mid-August, the Tour has come up with the four-tournament FedEx Cup. Players earn points each week as the field gets whittled down; the top 30 will advance to next weekend's Tour Championship, the thrilling conclusion.
Now get this: To win the kinda-playoffs -- intentionally spelled with a small "k" -- a golfer need not even show up for every tournament (hence the Jordan example in this column's first paragraph). Woods skipped The Barclays and Phil Mickelson found something better to do than play in the BMW. Yet either could win it all.
Whatever "it all" is.
Meanwhile, there is not one golfer who would rather win the FedEx Cup than any of the four majors (hence the Carter reference in paragraph two).
Why does golf need kinda-playoffs when it already has the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship? Answer: It doesn't. Those events provide some of the best drama in golf (or any sport) and determine the No. 1 golfer each year.
In Thursday's gallery, Stan Stinebaker of St. Louis sported a 'do featuring T-I-G-E-R shaved into his sandy hair. It was fun, and Woods got a kick out of it. What really struck me as I walked the course, however, was that the 28-year-old Stinebaker was one of the youngsters in the crowd.
For years, the Western Open was played during the first week of July and drew families galore. Well, I saw fewer than a dozen kids in the Woods-Stricker-Choi gallery. As Tiger said, it was a school day. Today will be, too. And over the weekend, most sports fans will focus on college and pro football, as well as baseball's pennant races.
The Bears, obviously a huge TV draw around these parts, open Sunday. How low can the kinda-playoffs' ratings go?
Not only did Tour honchos shift what had been a very successful tournament to September, they also decided to move it out of Chicago every other year. Incredibly, the nation's third-largest market -- one that has supported the PGA Tour enthusiastically -- is not going to have an event in either 2008 or 2010.
Said Woods: "Stricks and I did talk about that. It's unfortunate we're not going to be able to play this every year."
Unfortunate, yes. Shortsighted and ridiculous, too.
But hey, these are the kinda-playoffs! Excited yet, folks?
Mike Nadel (mikenadel@sbcglobal.net) is the Chicago sports columnist for GateHouse News Service. Read his blog, The Baldest Truth, at www.thebaldesttruth.com <http://www.thebaldesttruth.com> .