Great game's long goodbye

[Gxgolfer]

By John Huggan

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A FUNNY thing happened in golf last week. The most powerful organisation in the game, America's PGA Tour, surrendered. Faced with a long-obvious truth that, after the PGA Championship in mid-August, the vast majority of Uncle Sam's nieces and nephews are interested only in those sports involving helmets - specifically colourfully-dressed characters chasing a mini-rugby ball or anonymous men driving souped-up cars in endless circles - commissioner Tim Finchem announced that, from 2007, the structure of the PGA Tour will undergo drastic surgery. This will amount to, in his words, "the most impactful series of events in the history of the sport"!

Aye right, Tim.

What Finchem didn't say, of course, is that his tour's perennial problem arises from the biggest and most lucrative events in the game - the four majors and the Ryder Cup - being outside his control, much to his chagrin. The Masters is run by the Augusta National Club, the US Open by the United States Golf Association, the Open by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club and the USPGA and Ryder Cup, when played in the US, by the PGA of America.

So it hacks off Finchem no end that Tiger Woods would not care if he did not win another PGA Tour event: all the world No.1 wants is more Grand Slam titles.