Monday, Monday.... Can't take that Day

We don’t golf and we only follow the sport in a very casual fashion but we are not afraid to admit we got sucked into the drama of the U.S. Open here in San Diego on both Saturday and Sunday. But after trying to work our way around firewalls on the internet at work to monitor the playoff round today between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate, we became convinced the NBA and the PGA share notes on scheduling.

After Tiger sank his putt on the 18th yesterday to put him even with Mediate, we thought, “Awesome…! Sudden death, right here – right now”, only to hear the announcers say, “See ya tomorrow, folks.” Tomorrow…?

We rarely watch golf, let alone actually turn on the T.V. for the express purpose of watching golf and the one time where we totally bought into what the PGA was selling and allowed ourselves to get caught up in the emotion of Tiger’s comeback, they drop us in our tracks bringing all that momentum to a grinding halt.

Monday morning? Whatever. Got a job, man. And please, spare us the “This is the U.S. Open…its unique… its the only Major that plays 18 holes the next day for a playoff.” Adapt. Adjust. The PGA needed to capitalize on the momentum that the Open had going on Sunday afternoon. And if you want to continue the purist angle by maintaining the 18-hole playoff, fine… get it on right afterwards – there was still plenty of daylight left.

There is nothing wrong with tweaking your product to bring in the casual fan. A sudden-death playoff or even playing off 2 or 3 holes is not on the same level of dorky gimmickry like putting a hot tub in your ballpark or holding sausage races… uh, nevermind – those are kind of cool… we just don’t understand what was to be gained by waiting until the next day to play an entire extra round of golf.

It's this willingness to tweak things to draw-in the casual fan that is one of the big reasons why the NFL has swallowed whole the American sports scene. Golf, looking through their purist glasses, is pretty pleased with itself and thinks they hit a home run this weekend – we think they legged-out a triple. It was exciting but they didn't score.