Turning Stone Resort Championship October 2 - 5, 2008
Atunyote Golf Club at Turning Stone
Verona, NY
Par 72 / 7,482 yards
Purse: $6 million with $1.08 million going to the winner
Defending Champion: Steve Flesch
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Tournament facts:

Results & Scores 2007 Turning Stone Resort Championship

Box Score of 2007 Turning Stone Resort Championship

Tournament information:

Last year Steve Flesch hit 51 of 54 greens through three rounds in building up a four-stroke lead and needed only a 73 in the final round to win by two over Michael Allen. It was his second victory in two months, matching his previous career total.
Keys to victory for Flesch: He hit 64 of 72 greens for the week to lead that stat. He built a four-stroke lead through three rounds and held on from there.

Course information:

The course features Penn Links Bent grass on the tee boxes and fairways, which are cut at 0.3" and 0.4", respectively. The rough is a 4" cut of Kentucky Blue Grass, while the greens are a 0.12" cut of Penn A-4 Bent Grass. The greens on the course play relatively fast, with a Stimpmeter of 11 feet. This can primarily be attributed to the small cut of Bent Grass lining the putting surface.

Atunyote, which in the local native language Oneida means "Eagle," offers spacious fairways, large undulating greens, 63 steep-faced bunkers, and water coming into play. The largest body of water on the course measures just over 13 acres and runs along three holes including No. 18.

In its short existence, Atunyote has still managed to accumulate much critical acclaim. In 2004, it was ranked one of the "10 Best New Public/Resort Courses", and GOLF Magazine ranked it as one of the "Top 10 New courses you can play."

The Buzz:

Question number one is how the Tour does business without Tiger Woods. The answer is frankly harsh, they have to figure out something different. Based on network ratings the last six months just about every event is down, way down. Even events like last week's Tour Championship, which had a very compelling storyline with Camillo Villegas and Sergio Garcia, mixed with Phil Mickelson and Anthony Kim didn't draw much interest. So the bottom line is the tour needs to find something that works that doesn't involve Tiger Woods. Of course everyone is going to say, Tiger will be back in '09 and everything will be back to normal again. Just like congress having to fix the mortgage crisis, Tim Finchem has to fix the Tiger problem.

A lot that has to be fixed is the FedEx Cup. A couple of lessons learned, the overall concept of this playoff is wrong, it needs to have a final event that means something, how the tour does that nobody can guess right now. One thing that is certain, many have suggested that the Tour Championship mirror the ADT Championship in which you have a FedEx point system that gets the players to the Tour Championship and then for that one week you have a shootout elimination .

Another lesson learned is that the Tour Championship has to be on Labor Day weekend. One of the big problems in the poor ratings, even on a successful Ryder Cup is that ratings will always be down when Football is being played. The PGA Tour has to figure this out and change things, if it means shortening the season further, they need to do it. There will be no sin in asking some of the lesser events like the Bob Hope Chrysler, Sony Open in Hawaii or the Zurich Classic of New Orleans to move into the Fall schedule, it would help the overall FedEx Cup events to be concluded the end of August. While were talking about the end of the season, I also don't think the Tour should start until the third week of January, again to figure out a way to not compete with football. Now lets look at the Fall series events, the first one happened two weeks ago in the Viking Classic so the fall series is beginning. In it's first year it received mix reviews. Yes the fields lack marquee names and some have said it resembles a Nationwide Tour event. I would disagree, last year we saw players like Chad Campbell, Steve Flesch, Justin Leonard, Mike Weir and Stephen Ames win. We also saw some good golf along the way so for the golf junkie that doesn't give a hoot about football this is great. Another thing to watch is the growth of these events. Look at the buzz coming out of Las Vegas on the Justin Timberlake tournament, you get people that care and put a little money behind it and the odds are that it could succeed. I personally like to see this time of year and think that the future is good for it.

Yes the race for the top spot on the money list is still on, but it is impossible (mathematically possible, but, trust me, not feasible) for anyone other than Vijay Singh to win it. This fall series is just about players that are in the top 125 winning more money. For others it will be all about retaining their PGA Tour cards for 2009 by finishing in the top-125. For others it will be making sure to finish out the year in the top-150 so that they will have some tour privileges in 2008.

One thing that has been overlooked is the race to get into other events, including majors. Not only do players qualify for majors through the final money list, but also the World rankings, which will still be going on for the next six weeks

A couple of other things that players will be thinking of are getting into the top-70, which gets you into the limited field events like the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Memorial. Also, winning an event in the next six weeks punches you a ticket to open your season in Maui in the Mercedes-Benz Championship. So, yes these next six weeks will mean something to a lot of players. Now this event, the Turning Stone Resort Championship has a lot of good things behind it, first it's the highest purse of these fall events with first place getting over a million dollars. It's being played on a first class venue with people that care about it. It will be interesting to see if this event will one day move into the FedEx Cup schedule like the Valero Texas Open will be next year.

Here are some things to look for this week:

Photo: © Christopher Condon/Wire Images The 18th hole of the Atunyote Golf Club in Verona, NY, home of the inaugural Turning Stone Resort Championship..

For the average golfer like you and I, the Atunyote course is tough. But for the professionals on the PGA Tour this course is a breeze. Last year the average score was 71.718, making it 48th ranked out of 55 courses. In looking at the holes, it only had two ranked in the top-200 on the tour in 2007, the 11th. A par 3 it played to a 3.229 average and was the 137th ranked hole. The par 4, 13th hole was ranked 184th toughest with an average of 4.191.

• Key stat for the winner:
  Looking at stats from the 2007 Turning Stone Resort Championship, hitting greens were import, Flesch hit the most, 2nd place finisher Michael Allen was T10th while John Senden, who was T3rd was T2nd in hitting greens last year.
• Player has to be a birdie machine, those that make the most will win. Last year the top four players on the leaderboard made a total of 86 birdies
• Running the par 5s will help, that means the winner will have to hit it long. Length will rule the roast over accuracy. Looking at the par 5s last year the top four players on the leaderboard were 35 under on the par 5s
• Scrambling is also very important because it's not that demanding around the greens at Atunyote. So greens hit isn't as important as being able to get up and down on those missed.
• Good putters should have a field day this week. Last year John Rollins won while leading in putting and five of the top-ten also were high in putting.

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