Ok. Tim Finchem hasn’t really slit his wrists, but he surely must want to. Phil Mickelson, winner of last week’s Deutsche Bank Championship is skipping this weeks installment of the FedEx Championship. Worse, it appears as though it may be the result of an unspecified conflict with Finchem.
LEMONT, Ill.—Phil Mickelson withdrew Tuesday from the BMW Championship, one day after threatening not to play because of a conflict he had with PGA TOUR commissioner Tim Finchem over issues he wouldn’t explain.
“This decision was not an easy one to make, and in no way is meant as disrespectful to the tour or ‘sending a message’ to anyone,” Mickelson said in a statement. “I’ve talked for weeks about needing to find a balance between my game, my business affairs and my family, and now is the time for me to take some time off.”
Mickelson was playing a corporate outing with sponsor Bearing Point in the Chicago area. He said he would be in Atlanta next week for the TOUR Championship.
Its interesting that Phil can be in the Chicago area for an outing, but not play in the Chicago area BMW (formerly Western Open).
Phil’s not alone. Padraig Harrington, winner of this years British Open Championship, won’t be there either.
This isn’t working out the way the Tour planned it. In fact, it’s all gone horribly wrong. First Tiger takes a bye. Then Phil, while leading the Championship, takes a week off. Ernie Els also has gone missing during the series.
I honestly think the Tour should give up on this one. I’ve been predicting the defection of the top players since the beginning. As I overheard a longtime tour player say at the Buick:
“These guys don’t care about the Fedex Cup. They only care about Majors. If they win the Fedex Cup, they’ll just pitch it.”
The problem is, some of the top guys are pitching it before they win it.
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They should actually thank Phil. I believe if he were to win Chicago he would have won the FedEx making the final tournament moot. What a great playoff system! They must have consulted with the BCS guys. Also, how often do these guys, beside VJ, play 4 weeks in a row?
Actually, I am still trying to figure out the points thing, but given a decent finish by Phil in the last event, as long as Tiger, Striker, or KJ does not win outright one of the events, Phil is now the winner. Phil, if he did play this weekend, might just about have locked it up if he finished highly.
Some ESPN editors are taking guesses on what the dispute with the PGA is. One of the ideas is the Pro-Am thing, and Phil may not want to be tied to it. This week, after monday, he had the Bearing Point thing on Tuesday, and then he would have had to do Pro-Am on Wednesday, and then play on Thursday. In the past I have been critical of Phil for the pro-am thing in Dallas, but in this case, he does have a point. Even if he didn’t have the thing on Tuesday, that is a pretty quick turnaround from Monday to Wednesday. What would the Tour have done if Monday had been rained out?
All in all, it is a shame that to follow up Tiger & Phil on monday that it won’t be followed up on this weekend.
I hope they rework this fairly quickly for next year. My opinion should be that there is an actual bracket of 64 or so, where the points so far determine seed position, and then 2 days of match play take it to 16, and then that 16 players play stroke play through one or two weekends to determine the cup.