PGA Tour players don't appear to be heeding commissioner Tim Finchem's request to play more tournaments

The Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club in metro Tampa is considered to be one of the PGA Tour’s finest venues, now host to the Transitions Championship. Unfortunately, the game’s top players don’t really care, as nine of the world’s top-ranked players decided to pass on the tournament despite being just down the road in Miami the weekend before, while several others including Tiger Woods and Ernie Els competed in the Tavistock Cup exhibition March 16-17th.

Consider it an unfortunate placement on the schedule between a World Golf Championship and Arnold Palmer’s prestigious Bay Hill Invitational on the Florida Swing, but the yearly tournament held here at the resort has struggled to attract the game’s top names despite a fantastic venue and a golf-crazy Tampa area community. The winner at the Transitions, Retief Goosen, took home a shade under $1 million. That’s just not good enough anymore when Bay Hill offers a purse about $500,000 more (and Arnie), and the WGC at Doral’s Blue Monster offers a winner’s share of $1.4 million.

The fingers shouldn’t just be pointed at Woods for not showing up to more events. I think we’d all take a pass at playing for $940,000 to make room on the schedule for a guaranteed U.S. $2 million payday, which is the reported number he was offered to compete in the Australian Open later this year.

Making the pros play in mandatory events aren’t the answer. If The PGA Tour ever announced the players show up to specific events or a certain number of events, a spin-off tour by the game’s top players would be inked by the following sunrise.

It seems like the future can only go two different ways for the PGA Tour: Either purse sizes and sponsorship deals need to be significantly reduced, so the top players actually have any kind of monetary incentive to stay on the road more than 20-25 weeks a year.

Or, the PGA Tour will lose a handful of sponsors and will become a seasonal sport, like baseball, teeing it up from March thru October. A few tournaments are already on wobbly ground, like the U.S. Bank Championship and the former Wachovia Championship in Charlotte, which is now simply named the Quail Hollow Championship, as new parent company Wells Fargo figures out how to best sponsor the tournament, in an age where bailed-out banks are being scrutinized for what some consider frivolous sponsorship deals.

Hawaii is also in the final year of their deal with the PGA Tour to host two tournaments to kick off the season. Reports are that the status on these events is in the air.

So it seems like the PGA Tour’s top players are going to play about 18-22 events a year no matter the circumstance. I wouldn’t be surprised however that soon it’ll be 20 out of 30 events rather than 20 out of 42.

Speaking of golf on the Florida Swing, click here to see how you can play the PGA Tour’s most accessible stretch of golf on schedule at four different and impressive Florida golf resorts.

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