At the end of this month, the PGA Tour policy board will meet with a very interesting item on the agenda: whether to lower the cut line for Tour events.
Reducing the number of weekend players would serve a number of purposes. First, it could improve the pace of play. Second, it would help with resolving weekend weather delays. And it would make television happier by allowing them to show more of the top players.
There’s also the practical end of it. Players on 40th-plus place really have no chance of winning on Sunday.
The question is how to do it. Among the options being considered:
1) Top 60 players and ties.
2) Top 65 players and ties.
3) The nearest number to 70 players.
4) Top 70 and ties, but if the number goes over 78, revert to nearest to 70.
5) Top 70 and ties make the cut on Friday, and another cut on Saturday for top 70 and ties.
Tiger apparently favors the Top 60 and ties. Interestingly, that would have left him outside the cut last weekend.
I think that lowering the cutline to 60 and ties is a great idea. In fact, I think it ought to be lowered to fifty and anyone within so many shots of the lead. That would allow more players in a tight tournament, but reduce the number of players when the leaders pull away.
But I really can’t imagine that the board will reduce the number of players making the cut, since that will reduce the number of players getting a paycheck. If anything, the pressure from the players has to be to increase the number of people taking home a paycheck.
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I have to agree with Miranda on this one. The tour needs to stop coddling Phil and Tiger on issues like this. Just like the story last week of Phil’s exemption from the pro am because he couldn’t drive 400 miles when the lesser players are not allowed to be exempt for things such as a grandmother’s funeral—the tour needs to actually be more of an assist to the lower ranked players – for they are going to every tournament, playing in all those pro-ams, and will be the future of the PGA.
If the extra 5 pairings (or even 10) are slowing it down that much, then have 3somes or 4somes of everyone below 36, and have them start as early as possible.
The second thing to look at would be to cut to 70 or 80 for Saturday, and then cut anyone past 40 (unless they are within 8 strokes or so), for Sunday.
I actually like the threesomes idea. I can’t recall which tournament it was, but they were running threesomes last month, and I thought that it was much more interesting.
It would be neat to have the top three guys playing together on Sunday. I think it also would make for better television.
There’s also been talk of eliminating Q School, which would be interesting in light of all of this. The plan would be that anyone who didn’t make the top x players would automatically go to the Nationwide. This would bump the lower rung Nationwide players down to the mini tours. IN essence, the PGA Tour would have a baseball like- Triple A, Double A, Single A system.