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Grass Is Greener Than Anyone Expected At Tour Championship

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By MICK ELLIOTT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 12, 2007

ATLANTA - Early action at East Lake Golf Club, where the Tour Championship begins play Thursday, included a lot of standing around watching grass grow.

Hey, as PGA Tour television commercials have been saying, it's the playoffs.

The strange week that will climax with the first FedEx Cup got off to a surreal start Tuesday as a course closed to spectators welcomed the 30-player field, while tour officials did a lot of head-scratching and damage control.

The good news: After further review, the condition of East Lake's greens may be better - or, at least, not as bad - as first speculated.

'The greens are 10 times better than what the tour told us they were going to be,' said Mark Calcavecchia, the March winner of Tampa Bay's PODS Championship. 'From what I heard, that might have been kind of the plan so nobody would be completely in a state of shock when they got here. The greens I don't think are going to be an issue.'

Tour officials announced Sunday that no practice rounds would be allowed because the putting surfaces had been damaged so badly by a summer heat wave and drought. However, improvement was judged sufficient enough to allow play, although three greens - Nos. 2, 13 and 15 - remained off limits and today's scheduled pro-am will not be played.

Even on the three greens that remained closed, from a distance the damage is not terribly noticeable.

'They're not what we would like to have every week, but for what they've gone through, they're pretty good,' tour rules official Mark Russell said. 'I think the greens will be rolling about 9 to 9.5 on the Stimpmeter, and we're not going to press them too much for speed.'

Up close, however, the damage is noticeable. Different shades of green and seam marks are visible where patch jobs were required. Green sand has been used to cover bare spots. Some greens show pox marks as if a giant heated waffle iron had been laid on the ground.

For a group of players who spent much of the past three weeks complaining about rules for $35 million in bonus money, such imperfect conditions would be expected to cause wailing like a car alarm. Except, all of a sudden, the realization seems to be that nobody wants to hear about the problems of chasing a $10 million winner's bonus.

In a nutshell, it may be time to just shut up and play.

'I think that's exactly what they need to do,' Stewart Cink said. 'It's only going to be as successful as the fans perceive we think it is - if that makes sense. If we embrace it, and if it means something to us, then the fans are going to think so and they are going to follow it and it's going to be big.'

In hindsight, the FedEx Cup's biggest image issue may have been the PGA Tour's decision to label the four-tournament series as 'playoffs.'

Typically, 'playoffs' suggest surviving one week to play the next. But Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson - Nos. 1 and 3 on the FedEx Cup points list - were among those who skipped one of the previous three weeks.

'Maybe it should be called the Tour Championship Series,' Masters champion Zach Johnson said. 'If you get stuck on really the definition of playoffs, it doesn't make any sense. I understand that.'

Or players could be required to compete all four weeks to be eligible for FedEx bonus money.

'I'm wrecked. I'm destroyed,' said Calcavecchia, who is playing all four FedEx weeks. 'Tiger is tired after two weeks. I've got him by 80 pounds and 17 years. How do you think I'm doing after eight out of nine weeks? He could run from here to downtown. I couldn't run out of a burning house.

'But you can't chain up a guy and drag him if he does not want to play. If he says, 'OK, I'm not playing Boston,' or, 'I'm not playing Chicago,' then you're not winning the FedEx Cup, either.

'But if you're in the top 30, you can come here and play. I don't see what's wrong with that rule.'

Reporter Mick Elliott can be reached at (813) 281-2534 or melliott@

tampatrib.com.

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