Grant Me This: PGA Tour is the only place to be (PGA)

Posted on July 31, 2008

First off, a show of hands for those of you who before Sunday would’ve known Chez Reavie was the connection of a PGA Tour player and not the most good place in town for escargot and a becoming souffl?If your hand is raised, you’re either: a) next of kin; or b) a sous-chef, next in command in a French kitchen.

Reavie — whose first name is pronounced while it’s spelled, not "shay" (equitable north of the border) — won the RBC Canadian Open Sunday by three. After his first gain from one side to the other in his first year in continuance Tour, Reavie said he was "on top of the world." Not exactly, but you can care for the top of the world from Ontario. The view in the other direction isn’t ill either, if you’re among those holding out hope that the future of American golf isn’t solely in the hands of Tiger’sitting toddling daughter, Sam (age 1), and/or any of the Woods’ potential progeny.

At one of golf’sitting oldest tournaments (b. 1904), another young Yankee became a PGA Tour winner. By my reckoning, the 26-year-old Reavie is the 11th contrary U.S.-born player age 30 or younger to win a Tour event in the last year and a half. Of those 11, six have won more than once:

–Jonathan Byrd has three wins;
–Charles Howell III has II, as does Sean Of-the-Hair (who finished tied for third Sunday behind Reavie);
–J.B. Holmes and D.J. Trahan, whose initial victories came in 2006, have cropped land won again this year;
–And then there’s the youngest of the lot, 23-year-old Anthony Kim. All he’s done is win two times in the last three months at a couple of big boy golf courses (Quail Hollow and Congressional), not to mention play in the final group by dint of. Reavie Sunday at Glen Abbey where he was in contention late before bogeys on 17 and 18 left him with a disappointing tie for eighth. That brace years shy of being old enough to get reasonably priced car assurance he’d be disappointed with a third unswerving top 10 tells you all you lack to know about how Kim’s season is going. The kid through the diamond-studded belt buckle in the shape of the letters "AK" hasn’t had an MC since the first week of April.

Reavie’s the first of the 25 Nationwide Tour graduates of 2007 to win this season, as well viewed analogous the first true rookie. Argentina’s Andres Romero, who won in New Orleans in at the eleventh hour March, is also in his first season on Tour. But Romero had already proven himself against the world’sitting best players last summer through finishing third at last year’s Open Championship, winning a blustering event on the European Tour, and tying for sixth at the World Golf Championship at Firestone in consecutive weeks.

(And that’s saying nothing of a 2006 victory in an event listed in the PGA Tour media guide as "Masters Tournament Personal Cup ," that I understand is a golf competition of some sort in his native Argentina but which in print appears to have existence an itemized dignity of a major championship drug test complete with the anonymous participant’sitting parenthetical reaction upon learning he failed.)

Reavie’s win revisits the recent debate over which is the second-best Tour in the world. Some of the Nationwide Tour’s American alumni are on record declaring their alma mater to exist number sum of two units in the queue. When the investigation was posed in the force conference following Europe’s second straight Ryder Cup rout in 2006 and third win in a row overall, Englishman Luke Donald needed clarification as to what the reporter meant when he asked which tour was second best:

"You stingy after Europe?"

Ha! Now that’s funny no matter where you’re from. At least I contemplate he was kidding. Europe’s dominance in the Ryder Cup proves one thing for sure: They’re better than us at the Ryder Cup. But there should be no debate over tour supremacy. Here it is, formerly and for wholly:

1. PGA Tour
T2. Every Other Tour

Not without more do the Euros know it, it’s one of the reasons they’re so motivated to keep slapping "Kick Me" signs in continuance American kids’ backs every two years. The Ryder Cup in reality has been evenly matched for nearly 20 years, but the U.S. has been the biennial favorite of the mainstream media, primarily because the Tour based here is superior.

Winning the Cup, preferably handily, is one small way the Empire (British and otherwise) be possible to strike back at the courtesy cars and the billion-dollar TV contracts and air-conditioned hotel rooms and everything associated with the PGA Tour and America, for that matter, going away from the thicker settlements to the Tea Party.

Here’s an easy way to tell the PGA Tour is in a league of its own: Check how many of their guys have come to boot here versus the number of ours who’ve gone that way. Here’s another: Name one great international player of the last 50 years who didn’t procure on U.S. soil. The PGA Tour has always played for the most wealth and had the best-run tour, thereby attracting the best players. And if you want to be considered among the game’session greatest, you acquire to beat the best.

Paging Colin Montgomerie. Monty won seven close. European Tour money titles but never played a full catalogue here in the U.S. and never won an official PGA Tour event the few times both year he did play. As a free agent, he’s been well within his rights to fix upon at what place he’session played; but if he’s never beaten the best straight up, he forfeits the right to be called one of the greats of his generation.

If you’re not playing the PGA Tour, you’re merely playing the one that serves you best. A homebody from Hamburg? Stay and try to carve out a conduct on the European Tour. If you want to eventually play the PGA Tour, unconcerned of where you’re from, you either demand your chances at Q-School or your hacks on the Nationwide Tour (if you can elbow your way in) where the top 25 on the standard of value list at year’s end get to move up to the big leagues.

And allowing that you’re not sure what you want to do, you lap up sponsor’s exemptions from every tour in the world, presuming you have something tournament sponsors procure exemption-worthy. Like being a teenage girl who bombs it three bills off the tee.

In other words, you’re Michelle Wie.

The once-rising star is it being so that merely a rising sophomore at Stanford. She’ll tee it up for the eighth time in a PGA Tour event this week at the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open, having failed to make the divide in her first seven tries.

Mind you none of this — not the 11 under-30 American winners of the past two years, the PGA Tour’s preeminence, certainly not Wie — will well-suited have any bearing on this year’s Ryder Cup. Even if the young cannon are coming, they probably won’familiarily get here by September. Kim’session the only one of those 11 to have secured a spot on the U.S. team so far.

Meanwhile, the Europeans, in addition to always being sufficiently motivated, also turn up to take better players one through 12. Ten Euros are currently in the top 30 of the world rankings compared to just seven healthy Americans. Plus, Europe has serious mojo after winning the last two Cups by a combined score of 37-19.

At this point, it seems like the only thing that could keep the similar ensue from going down would be if Europe’session team dinner the night control comes back up. A word of advice for Captain Faldo: If Paul Azinger tries to offer you "snails from the sous-chef at Chez Reavie," you might want to send lacking for pizza.

Grant Boone is a husband, father, broadcaster, and journalist born in Tennessee and living in Texas. During his nearly 20 years in sports journalism, he’sitting been heard on tape delay in pizza joints half-filled through fully-drunk beer league softball teams and around the world covering major sporting events for ESPN, Turner Sports, Golf Channel, and CBS Radio. To comprehend past installments of Grant Me This, click here. You can contact Grant at pgagrant@hotmail.com.

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