Your questions answered on why Phil Mickelson didn't join the European Tour, what is Carolyn Bivens going to say next week, new things for Golf Channel and officially ESPN will do the British Open for the next nine years.
I know that the average golf fan would love to be able to attend a professional golf press conference and ask a player or official any kind of questions. For the media it's a bit different, I know that I sit in these things and sometimes get bored because the best writers never ask those really juicy questions.
Most of the time that is because the media person doesn't want to ask a question that the whole press industry will then be able to write about but most of the time a question just doesn't get asked. So in the coming weeks on the "Buzz" blog we will have this section to ask and answer these kinds of questions. You can submit questions on our forums and answer some of them yourself and have fun trying to figure out what a player is doing or feeling.
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Back in May at Colonial the first story appeared on this when Andrew Both asked Phil Mickelson if he would join the European Tour and he said, "I don't have any immediate plans to do that, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out in the future."
This pretty much died down until just after the Ryder Cup when stories like this by Graham Otway ran on how Mickelson was getting ready to write a check for £115 to join the European Tour. After the announcement on October 6th on the schedule for the Race To Dubai, steam was gaining on Mickelson joining and on October 29th in a telephone interview with Mickelson, he told several writers including Martin Parry that "although I haven't yet joined (the European Tour), it is something I am certainly considering."
So what happened in a matter of just two weeks that Mickelson went from going to join the European Tour to in this story from Colin Pereira in PA Sport which Mickelson said he wasn't joining the European Tour in 2008? Of course the right question was never asked of Mickelson, what was the killer blow for him not joining the Tour. He did say in the press conference "It wasn't quite right for me time-wise but I have still made a commitment to play more golf internationally and I do believe that it's very possible that, in the near future, it will be in my plans."
So what happen on this is our big question. It seems a lot of things happened that messed it up in the last month. In talking with several members of the European media we can see the reasons that he was going to join. Back in September the requirement for European Tour membership was 11 events. With the four majors and three World Golf Championships that meant that Mickelson only needed four more for membership. With Mickelson playing in the HSBC Champions this month, the Barclay's Scottish Open over the summer that got him up to nine. With the start of the Race to Dubai coming in November of this year, the HSBC will be played twice in the 2009 season so that added another one bringing him up to ten. Back in September it also looked like the Barclays Singapore Open was going to be added to the European Tour schedule next year so that would bring him up to 11 with The Dubai World Championship next year being the 12th, one over the limit. Even when the Tour raised the requirement of membership to 12 from 11, it seemed no problem for Mickelson.
Then rumors started flying around the Volvo Masters that Mickelson was looking for appearance money from the folks that run the Open de France, which just happen to be the week before the Barclays Scottish Open. In looking at it, Mickelson could of played in three straight events in July, the French Open, the Barclays Scottish Open and the British Open. But in contacting officials of the French Open they wouldn't speak about Mickelson but said that they don't give appearance money period. Also during the week other rumors surfaced that put the pieces together in all of this. Seems that the folks at Barclays weren't very happy that Mickelson was playing in a competing banks golf tournament. Mickelson countered saying that he had made the commitment and that he was the defending champion. So that was another strike against Mickelson, because he won't be able to play in the HSBC Champions in November of 2009. But the killer blow was not getting an agreement together for the Barclays Singapore Open on the European Tour circuit. Now the deal could go through, for all we know if may be a done deal right now but Mickelson had to join the European Tour before the start of the HSBC Champions. If he didn't and joined it the week after, the previous event would not count against his 12 starts. So with the prospect of the Barclays Singapore Open not being on the schedule in 2009, not playing in the HSBC next year and nothing else in the hopper for 2009 even if the Singapore Open would of joined the European Tour Mickelson would still be one short of playing 11 in time for the Dubai World Championship, so that was the reason for Phil not joining.
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The Champions Tour came out with their schedule and lost three events, in Turtle Bay, Hawaii, the Back of American Championship in Concord, Massachusetts and the Commerce Bank Championship in East Meadow, New York. Again this looks bad on the surface but you have to look at how ugly it would of been if the Champions Tour and some local events didn't do some quick work. Next year two events in Hawaii and Austin got saved with last minute sponsorships so three isn't as bad when you think it could of been five.
So now we have to look at one tour that hasn't weight in yet, the LPGA Tour. Next week at the ADT Championship Carolyn Bivens will be making probably the most important speech of her career. She will release her 2009 schedule (we hope) and what the state of the LPGA Tour is going to be. Bivens is in the third year of her term and frankly her ratings are about as high as President Bush.
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So what could transpire in this press conference and what questions could come up? First will be what happen to the relationship with ADT. This partnership started with it's move to Florida in 2001 and has been good. It was a shock to the players at a October 14th players meeting when Bivens announced their pull out. Several sources wonder if Bivens dealing with ADT didn't force them to leave. First is the move from November to February and the fact that Bivens was looking for a bigger fee to get network television. The question that could come out is that maybe this caused ADT to drop the event. Still things aren't a total lost since the LPGA does own the event and they will get a new sponsor, even thought it's been a tough proposition, just look at the problems in getting one for Phoenix.
Adding to Bivens problems were players not happy seeing the event move away from 2009 and starting the 2010 season with the largest first place check on tour, also putting a damper on not being played in 2009. Players also have indicated that the first part of the 2009 schedule was as one put it "ugly" Right now we know that the sponsors that won't be back in 2009 is Fields, that put on the event in Hawaii, Safeway that had the Phoenix event, SemGroup Championship which had the Tulsa event, Ginn Tribute the event in South Carolina and of course ADT. Now the Phoenix event is supposedly going to be done by the LPGA Tour and the SemGroup has another sponsor so with ADT moving to early 2010 the loss of events should only be three.
But the big question will be what is the state of negotiations with CBS and NBC. At the beginning of the summer rumors floated around that both networks were talking with the LPGA to air 11 events in 2010. Is that going to happen? Next question, if it does happen did they pay a rights fee? As for the status of ESPN its no secret that they don't expect to do any golf past the 2009 contract and talks between the network and Bivens have been unproductive. Even the Golf Channels deal was up in the air but we are now hearing that negations are either taking place or a deal is in place for Golf Channel doing the whole 2010 schedule. In contacting Golf Channel they had no comment on the rumor.
So as you can see, this meeting next week is going to be very important and it will be interesting to see what Bivens has to say and how she responds to the media which she has a very cold relationship with.
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Talking about Golf Channel programing, we have know that shows like the Sprint pre and post game are great with Frank Nobilo and Tim Rosaforte. But they tend to drag when those two aren't there, but over the weekend GolfWeek's Jeff Rude was on and showed a lot of promise. He was well versed on storylines and quick on his feet in answering questions. I feel that he has a great future ahead of him doing this but Jeff, cut off the facial hair. Also management has gotten smarter on some shows, last year they aired the Singapore Open in a two hour highlight package, a day later, it was terrible. This year it's live and has full four and five hour windows, way to go Golf Channel.
Lastly what has been rumor for over a year finally became official today as the R&A have announced that they have a new contract with ESPN and ABC Sports to televise the British Open and the Senior British Open for 8 years. The deal places all four days of live coverage of the British Open on ESPN but in a bit of a twist, there will be three hours a day of afternoon highlights on ABC over the weekend. The agreement also includes coverage of the 2011 and 2015 Walker Cup but what may be important over the years is the agreement that ESPN will have coverage in other countries like Canada, Mexico, Latin America, parts of South America, Asia and digital rights in every country except China.
