Money Matters : Only the Top 30 Get a Shot at $3 Million in the Tour Championship

By THOMAS BONK

Oct. 24, 1996 12 AM PT

Prepare to fly your flagsticks at half staff. The Tour Championship, which begins today at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., officially marks the end of the regular golf season, which means it’s the last event in which earnings count on the official money list.

And if there is one thing the Tour Championship has taught us the nine years it has been around, it’s that money usually is the official object of this exercise.

Last year at Southern Hills, Billy Mayfair won by three shots and earned $540,000. It was the biggest moment of Mayfair’s career, not counting when he got married on the 18th green of a golf course and offered this explanation: “We’re going to be spending the rest of our lives on a golf course, we might as well be married on one.”

Anyway, just so there won’t be anyone suffering withdrawal from the end of the official golf season, you’re going to have to wait, oh, three whole days for the unofficial one to tee off next week in Hawaii.

As far as official money goes, however, the Tour Championship is in a flat-out sprint to the bank. It’s one of only two $3-million tournaments on the schedule. The other is the Players Championship, so you can guess which are two of the more popular events on the tour among the players?

Since it’s the 10th anniversary of the Tour Championship, it seems like a good time to take a look back at the history of the tournament and make proper note of its more historic occasions.

The first one was held at Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio in 1987. It was known as the Nabisco Championships and was won by Tom Watson, which didn’t seem so unusual at the time, basically because he had won 31 tournaments before. But Watson didn’t win another one for nine years. He broke his streak this year at the Memorial. Watson is also back in the tournament for the first time since the event made its debut.

The next year’s tournament was sort of interesting too. Curtis Strange and Tom Kite were tied after 72 holes at Pebble Beach, but it got too dark Sunday to have a playoff. So they showed up bright and early Monday morning in front of about 50 people and played two holes, which was enough for Strange to win. The next year, Strange won the U.S. Open for the second consecutive year, but he hasn’t won a tournament since.

At least Strange had plenty of time to count his money as a result of his victory at Pebble. His biggest payday ever--$360,000--made him the first player to pass $1 million in yearly earnings.

Kite came back, though. Just as Strange had done, Kite went over the $1-million mark in earnings with his victory in 1989, which he also accomplished in a playoff.

Now, figure this out: In 1989, Kite won the PGA Tour’s two richest events (the Players and the Tour Championship) and in 1990, Jodie Mudd did the same thing. Mudd hasn’t won a tournament since.

Meanwhile, Craig Stadler went the other way. When he won the 1991 Tour Championship at Pinehurst No. 2, it was Stadler’s first tournament victory in seven years. He has won three more since.

There have been five playoffs in the first nine years, the last one at the Olympic Club in 1994. Mark McCumber beat Fuzzy Zoeller when he rolled a 60-foot putt uphill, played about 10 feet of break and watched the ball drop into the hole as if it were allergic to sunlight.

Zoeller wasn’t too upset about losing to McCumber, who cashed a check for $540,000.

“I’ve still got hair, Mark doesn’t,” Zoeller said.

McCumber’s victory was not only profitable, but musical, since he spent most of his time on the course whistling tunes from “Phantom of the Opera.”

Mayfair’s victory last year at Southern Hills deserved its own footnote because he was the only player in the field who shot par. Nobody else was better than three over. Don’t feel too badly, though. Nick Price finished last. He made $48,000.

The only player Tiger Woods bumped out of the top 30 on the money list with his victory in the Walt Disney last week and moved out of a berth in the Tour Championship field was Lee Janzen. He had a sponsor’s commitment to play in Japan. Janzen finished 31st on the money list, about $3,000 behind Duffy Waldorf.

It has been quite a year for disqualifications on the PGA Tour, including two in the last two weeks. A few of them have been really, well, odd. Mark Calcavecchia disqualified himself a day after a tournament ended when he noticed a wrong score in the newspaper.

Because he had signed an incorrect scorecard, he should have been disqualified, so Calcavecchia went ahead and did it himself, costing himself a paycheck of more than $10,000. Even without that, and despite playing in Japan instead of at the Disney, Calcavecchia managed to remain in the top 30 at 28th.

Greg Norman did a similar thing at Hartford when he played with a golf ball that didn’t have the right stamping on it. Norman used a ball that was stamped XS-9 when he should have been using a ball stamped with XS-90. We can only imagine what a terrible crime that was.

Taylor Smith was disqualified Sunday while he was waiting to get into a playoff with Woods at the Disney. Smith’s infraction was that the grip on his putter was flat near the bottom and it should have been round.

On the Nike Tour, P.H. Horgan III had a similar situation. He was waiting to start a playoff at Shreveport, La., when he casually told a rules official about something that happened when he was marking his ball--the day before. Horgan said he dropped his golf ball on the green and it moved his marker. He should have taken a one-shot penalty. Because he didn’t, that meant he had signed an incorrect scorecard and P.H. got a DQ.

Golf Notes

The Casa Colina Wheelchair Sports classic will be played Dec. 2 at Industry Hills. The event benefits the Casa Colina Foundation. Details: 909 596-7733. . . . UCLA hosts the Rolex Match Play Championships on Sunday and Monday at the Weiskopf course at PGA West. Eight men’s teams and eight women’s teams will play. Defending NCAA champion Arizona State and Florida are the top men’s teams. The others are Nevada Las Vegas, Texas Christian, Clemson, East Tennessee State and Texas. Arizona is the top women’s team. The others are San Jose State, Arizona State, UCLA, Stanford, Wake Forest, Texas and Duke. . . . The 12th Crippled Children’s Society invitational will be Nov. 4 at Wilshire Country Club. Details: 213 874-3300. . . . The second Long Beach State baseball tournament will be played Nov. 18 at Virginia Country Club in Long Beach. The event benefits the school’s baseball team. Details: 310 985-7548. . . . The eighth Montebello Family YMCA classic will be Nov. 1 at Montebello Country Club. Details: 213 887-9622.

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Tour Championship

PREVIOUS WINNERS

1987: Tom Watson

1988: Curtis Strange*

1989: Tom Kite*

1990: Jodie Mudd*

1991: Craig Stadler*

1992: Paul Azinger

1993: Jim Gallagher Jr.

1994: Mark McCumber*

1995: Billy Mayfair