Chasing Pure

Currently, the PGA Tour is engaged with the FedEx Cup, that for me, is mostly tedious.

Dustin Johnson, one of the current stars on Tour, tweeted yesterday that playing for so much cash is motivation enough for him. I agree. For him.

As a fan, however, I am not that engaged.

One of the keenest aspects of "professional" golf is that one gets paid.

For those with a chance to win a bundle, the event has significant purpo$e, opportunity, and deep interest (as well as a trunk of principle).

Key phrase, of course, THOSE WITH A CHANCE TO WIN A BUNDLE. I think the Tour is desperately trying to sell fans that this event has merit because of what a player can win, without addressing that it is a meandering distraction where eventually some lucky and skilled player takes home a huge bonus.

For me, that is not all that interesting. Certainly there is pressure, and there is often great golf. But it is a PPP event  — Paid Per Player.

Oddly, at least for me, at no time do I consider how much cash a player wins during a major, or many of the higher-tiered events, notably The Players and Memorial and Bay Hill. Nor do I scan the money list,

I'm engaged in those golf events because of the intangible and tangible factors that the FedEx Cup does not have and so desperately requires, in my view.

It is vastly ironic that the Tour dilutes the FedEx event every time it mentions the Ryder Cup, which has a higher, more pure purpose. Sometimes it seems there is a FedEx bonus BECAUSE of the Ryder Cup, which is an honor simply to make the team on your own merit. Those first automatic 8 slots reflect strong play over a significant passage of time. A great tribute to one's efforts. And the four that eventually get picked also can boast their games are peaking at a great time.

There has always been muttering by some players, though, that while it is highly fantastic to make this team, that with so much money involved, the "cast" in the film should be paid. I have no comprehension of what it must be like to make so much money, and play so well that you are involved with golf's most engaging event — The Ryder Cup.

Is that experience a reward? From the cheap seats it appears that way.

Can see both sides.

A barrel of cash near an 18th green, for some I suppose, creates fantastic suspense, mostly for those with a chance to win it.

I would think that concept would work much better if less players in the field were not already multi-millionaires. Kind of like the NBA. Does anybody really give a shit how much LeBron makes? What we care about, or at least me, is how he plays on the biggest stage.

Stories of journeymen pros strapped for cash, living in cars week to week, barely making a living are not as prevalent now as they were routine in the 1940s-50s. Winning a tournament then meant a pro and his family could keep chasing the dream which was essentially to keep chasing a dream.

Arnie changed that. Then Jack. Then Tiger REALLY changed how much a player might win.

Golf in the 21st century has sci-fi equipment and Warren Buffett rewards.

Meanwhile, a team event that involved at first two nations, the USA and England, then expanded to include more Euro countries — a notion Jack felt would make the Ryder Cup more fair and interesting.

Ha.

The Ryder Cup is a bag phone in a typewriter world clinging to the raft of social consciousness.

For me, The Ryder Cup is one of the basic elements of golf that include size of cup on the greens, each course has 18 holes, and that there are short holes (par 3), longer holes (par 4) and MUCH longer holes (par 5)  with overall par ranging from 70 to 73. That's the foundation.

Toss in the aspect of integrity ... that players of all levels — ideally — attempt to play real golf as in playing it as it lies, and that infractions are to be called by the participants themselves.

This is the pure stuff. Those amazing late afternoons when you and your fellow competitors are chasing daylight to finish before dark .. how the length of the shadows shifts ... the stillness ... the clarity of the moment.

There is nothing better.

It is fantasy to believe that golf at its highest level and on its most mammoth stage can retain that sense of universal joy .. as if a world class guitarist chooses to sit on his porch and concoct a tune ... and if one is lucky enough to be there ... well .. there could be nothing better, say, than listening to Eric Clapton or J.J.Cale (name your own artist), work magic on an acoustic guitar. No crowd. No microphones. No lights. Just an artist and his music.

I remember as a kid watching Arnie strut up the 18th fairway at Augusta, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Drama. Passion. Victory.

Then the countless hours on forgotten dog tracks, where at dawn or dusk, I trudged down fairways, through trees and poison ivy, hunting cracked Titleists and putts for par.

How I scrunched my shoulders a la Arnie to putt … or when on the tee after a sprayed drive, used Arnie’s signature body language to will the ball back into play. Sadly, that worked only for Arnie, and only sometimes, even for The King.

I guess the point of this post is that the money is meaningless unless you have a chance to take it home. Happy for those who have that chance, but that’s not what engages me.

The Tour needs to figure out why its fans “need” the FedEx Cup, and not continue to assume that it is the cash.