Sports Roundup by Various Sports Writers

By Tim Sullivan

Before his personal failings were found out, Tiger Woods covered a multitude of sins.

His presence was a godsend to golf tournaments. His star power sold tickets and sponsorships and merchandise and many minutes of television advertising. He was the rising tide that lifted all boats, often beyond the reach of barnacles.

He camouflaged a lot of legitimate concerns.

The troubled potentate of Torrey Pines is absent again from his kingdom on the cliffs and what is known, for this year at least, as the Farmers Insurance Open, and the void he has left has brought the PGA Tour's systemic problems into sharper focus.

Only five of the world's top 30 players are competing at Torrey Pines this week, and that represents enormous progress after last week's Obscurity Open at La Quinta, the 51st Annual (but suddenly sponsor-less) Bob Hope Classic.

Without Woods around to make it matter, the whole West Coast swing hangs on the lip of irrelevance. Worse, the guys with the greatest stake in its success — the Tour players themselves — are a collective shrug in the search for answers.

"I don't know how you fix that situation," Rocco Mediate said yesterday.

"I don't think there is a solution," said Brandt Snedeker.

The PGA schedule has been stretched so far — from the first week of January through the Tour Championship in late September — that top players pick their spots the way Douglas MacArthur picked his battles in the Pacific, concentrating their efforts on the largest prizes while leaving the lesser ones to "wither on the vine."

The problem is compounded by the simultaneous Middle Eastern swing of the European Tour, where appearance money (forbidden on the PGA Tour) provides top players a bountiful bird in the hand even if they should never make a birdie.

Not one of the world's top 30 players played the Hope last week, but 10 of the top 25 competed for a significantly smaller purse in the concurrent Abu Dhabi Championship. This week, 11 of the top 30 are in Qatar — ask your sixth-grader to find that on a map — for a tournament whose winner will make $155,000 less than the runner-up at Torrey Pines.

It's hard to blame a player for grabbing a guaranteed six-figure payday overseas when playing stateside might mean missing the cut; harder still to blame those players who possess dual golf citizenships, membership on the European and PGA tours.

Still, so long as the two tours operate with different ground rules, numerous PGA stops will be operating at a competitive disadvantage in courting contestants.

Were Woods somewhat less smitten with Torrey Pines and Phil Mickelson less of a local icon, that disadvantage could be dramatic.

"At the end of the day, golfers are independent contractors," said Century Club President Tom Wornham. "In order to attract an independent contractor, you'd better have something that they want to come for. And until we can provide a product that is competitive with where else they're going, we'd better make sure that we have a reason for them to come here."

Relatively speaking, the Torrey Pines field compares with the Hope as the Masters compares with the John Deere Classic. Though U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover is the only grand slam defender on the grounds, Mickelson and two-time Open champions Ernie Els and Lee Janzen are here. Plus the one-man circus called John Daly.

"I'm still pleased with who we have," Wornham said. "If you look at the three weeks that preceded us, it's not like we've got a windmill on 18, a big shoe on 9 and go-carts in the parking lot. We've got a tournament here that is worthwhile for people to come out."

Some players shun Torrey Pines because of their discomfort with the daunting South Course. Kenny Perry, the top American playing in Qatar this week, finds the place so frustrating that he didn't bother attempting to qualify for the 2008 U.S. Open. Other players prefer to start their season later and/or where the weather is more reliable.

"Guys want to play what they like to play," said Mediate, Woods' friendly foil in their 2008 Open playoff. "I've always thought that every couple years you should have to play pretty much every event.

"Not every event, but if you skipped San Diego last year, you need to play every two or three years, which I think is not asking that much. Whether it be Tiger or whether it be me or whether it be whoever, it doesn't matter where you are in the food chain, we'll say, you should have to play certain events."

At present, players are required to play a minimum of 15 events in order to keep their PGA Tour card, but they are under no obligation to make specific stops on the circuit. Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem has floated the idea of adopting a more flexible schedule to rotate preferred dates among more tournaments, but there can be no movement on that front until at least 2013, after existing television contracts expire.

"There has to be some give and take," Mediate said. "Something has to happen. I wish I had the answer, but I don't. But something needs to happen."

If not something concrete, someone specific: Tiger Woods.

Tim Sullivan writes about sports for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

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