Many Off-Season Events Are Too Rich to Refuse

Golf’s off-season lasts so long that you’ve got just about enough time to have lunch before it’s over.

There really isn’t an off-season. Not anymore. Not since the so-called special events have gained such prominence in the period after the Tour Championship in late October.

Of course, it’s all about money, and you can’t blame the players for trying to make the best living they can. But PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said last week that he is concerned enough about the effect of the off-season events on the early season tournaments that he is going to start monitoring the whole thing.

At stake may be the continued success of the West Coast tournaments, the regular tour events likely to be most affected.

If players choose to play special events in November and December, then skip the tour events in January and February, the PGA Tour won’t be able to deliver the quality fields it wants, setting off an unwanted chain reaction. Poorer fields equal poorer ratings, equal worried sponsors, equal trouble.

Finchem indicated that if the situation warrants, he might limit the number of television releases for players, which are at his discretion.

It may happen. Consider Corey Pavin’s schedule, for instance. He played in only three special events in the off-season and won $1.465 million.

But Pavin is playing the Mercedes Championships, then taking five weeks off, which means he is skipping the Bob Hope, which he has won twice, and Pebble Beach.

Two of Pavin’s three off-season events were two-day tournaments--the PGA Grand Slam and the Skins Game. In eight days playing special events, Pavin had nearly as much as leading money winner Greg Norman did in a year.

“The players used to come in here and say they were rusty,” Pavin said. “Now they say they’re tired.”

Lee Janzen isn’t playing the Hope, but he is playing four of the first five weeks. He scheduled his time off in May. The result of all the November-December special events may be that players scheduled their own off-season.

“I think everybody wants to see stars like Fred Couples and Greg Norman, but there are only so many tournaments they can play,” Janzen said. “And you can’t discourage these guys from playing to make a living.”

Mark O’Meara said he had a skiing vacation planned, so he turned down a chance to play in the Johnnie Walker special event last month in Jamaica, where last place was worth $57,000.

“I know some people say, ‘I’d swim across the ocean for $57,000,’ ” O’Meara said.

“Ideally, I’d like to take two months off, but with golf the way it is today, it’s a 12-month cycle. You just have to watch it. You start jetting here and there and sooner or later, you’re going to pay the price.”

But in the meantime, they’re going to pay you.

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Firsts: The first PGA Tour birdie of 1996 was by Duffy Waldorf. The first bogey was by Jim Furyk.

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Famous last words, by Arnold Palmer: “I’m not going to play much this year. I keep saying that, and I don’t know where it builds.”

Palmer said he planned to have a quiet January. That’s not going to happen.

“It’s entirely booked,” he said. “I don’t have one free day.”

Palmer is playing the Bob Hope, the Senior Skins and the AT&T; at Pebble Beach.

“I’m doing it because I enjoy it,” Palmer said.

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Riviera redux: Bill Baker’s resignation as course superintendent at Riviera is the latest event in a lingering controversy about the greens.

With the Nissan Open about six weeks away, Riviera’s beleaguered greens are supposed to be better than they were at the PGA Championship in August when they spiked up easily and were nearly bare.

Ben Crenshaw, who had a hand in redoing the greens when the project began more than two years ago, was saddened by Baker’s departure.

“It’s too bad, he’s a good man,” Crenshaw said. “But management and members are going to have to figure out what to do. But it doesn’t do any good to start pointing fingers.”

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Golf Notes

Callaway Golf hired club designer Roger Cleveland, who founded Cleveland Golf in 1979. . . . Mercedes-Benz has extended its title sponsorship of the Mercedes Championships at La Costa for two years. . . . The Tom Weiskopf private course, the fifth course at PGA West, opened last week. The 7,164-yard course joins others designed by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. One feature of the Weiskopf course is an extra hole. The “bye” hole is the 19th hole, a 100-yard par-three over water to a green with a bunker in the middle. . . . The two golfers from Dayton, Nev., who had consecutive holes in one recently didn’t accomplish such a rare feat after all. Christine Heilman of the Guinness Book of World Records in Enfield, England, said successive aces “occur fairly regularly.”