By Brett Avery Dear Phil and Tiger, Not sure how you're spending this week because the postcards haven't arrived in the mailbox from your far-flung locales. That means you could have opted for quality time at home enjoying one of The Fantasy Insider's favorite pastimes: sitting on the sofa watching Oprah and eating bonbons (wasn't the Madonna interview marvy?). Now, before you get the wrong idea and stop reading, rest assured that TFI isn't going to slag you for sitting out this or any other week. You fly around the world playing the game, you're constantly in the spotlight, people continually question everything from how you hit shots to your families and physical appearance. You want a week off? Take a week off. Sure, many of us would crawl through the desert carrying a mule on our backs to play four rounds at East Lake Golf Club this week -- even absent the prospect of $104,000 for last-place money in THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola. But that's not the message TFI wants to convey today on behalf of the 30,000-plus people who compete in Salary Cap Cup. What all of us want to let you know is this: You have turned one of the easiest selection tournaments of the season into hell week. It's been a long season for we fantasy players, too. No, a brutal season. Phil's fizzle after those springtime back-to-back wins, Tiger's absence and then bump at the U.S. Open (and subsequent questions of how soon he'd return to form), the woes of Vijay Singh and Ernie Els and a parade of where'd-he-come-from winners (Arron Oberholser! Ben Curtis!! Eric Axley!!!). Picking five guys each week has been anything but fishing-in-a-barrel easy.
But through all the downturns and the rotten weeks when four guys miss the cut by a shot (and the fifth makes something like $9,256), we give ourselves a pep talk that boils down to: "That's OK, because THE TOUR Championship will be a creampuff." Thirty guys. Thirty really good guys. Who we have watched all season. And know like the backs of our hands. Most of us in Salary Cap Cup wind up with lineups for THE TOUR Championship that are pretty much the same: Tiger and four guys or Phil and four guys (or, for those of us who have zero creativity, Tiger and Phil and three guys). Mathematically speaking it's akin to playing a lottery with, like, nine numbers. Almost everyone's a winner. Last year Bart Bryant threw us a curve by taking THE TOUR Championship. Most weeks during the season all but a few of us would have pulled our hair out in bloody clumps because we didn't have him. That week? "Terrific," we said in unison, knowing we were barely scratched thanks to 30,000-plus near-identical lineups. The fact we banked second-place money thanks to Tiger soothed our minor wounds. The people at the top of the segment standings stayed in roughly the same order. Our arch rivals couldn't pass us at the end and brag all winter. No harm, no foul. But now, with the two of you sitting out, we actually have to pick five guys. Five guys! The fact that the salary range tops out at $250,000 (instead of the usual $300,000) and bottoms out at $115,500 (instead of $75,000) also means we can pull just about any five guys out of the barrel. So there's zero excuses for a bad week. The implications are enormous. The top 20 teams in Segment Four are separated by about $800,000. With the two of you in the field and taking up most of the oxygen (and picks), $800,000 is a big hurdle. With the two of you out of the picture? That amount's peanuts. If someone ran the table this week -- picked all of the top five and snagged every round-leader bonus with tied leaders each day -- they could total north of $3.5 million. If you go the other way and pick the last five guys, you can't break $600,000. We can't coast to the finish line. We've got to sweat out every single shot. In fact, it's even worse this week because there's no cut. If we pick a stinker (or five) we've got to watch their scores spiral downward all weekend. It'll be like "Groundhog Day" but we wake up each morning to watch the same players flail around East Lake like Bill Murray. Thanks. Loads. We want you to enjoy this week's vacation and not worry about us. Really. We're big girls and boys, we can handle everything, we know how to reach you if there's a problem. We'll pick our five guys and live with the consequences. And we won't spend too much time obsessing about how this was supposed to be a kick-back-and-relax week, like it is for you. Really. In fact, we've forgotten it already. Your pals, TFI and his Salary Cap Cup buddies P.S.: You're planning on playing the next really easy selection week, the one for tournament winners in January, right? Because a week in Hawaii for guaranteed money sounds like a heavenly way to start 2007. Pick One: Jim Furyk ($250,000). The only guy pushing Woods this season has eight top-three finishes (!) and has missed the top four on TOUR only twice since the Memorial Tournament. His record at East Lake is bumpy (ties for 18th and 15th recently, a tie for third in 1998) but he's got the recent game. Balance: $750,000. Pick Two: Vijay Singh ($233,500). 1] He's got to make some noise to "salvage" his season. 2] He's finished in the top 10 in this event 10 times (winning here in 2002). 3] He's eighth in the par breakers stat and East Lake is all about making birdies and eagles. Balance: $516,500. Pick Three: Davis Love III ($194,000). That victory in the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro, practically backyard territory for a Carolina boy, was a sweet way to end that winless drought. Only thing better for an Atlantic Coast Conference guy? Winning in enemy territory. Like down the road from the Georgia Tech campus. Balance: $322,500. Pick Four: Brett Wetterich ($151,500). Let's see ... missed 17 cuts last year, wins the EDS Byron Nelson Classic and makes the Ryder Cup team this year en route to a TOUR Championship berth. Waitress, I'll have whatever he's having! Balance: $171,000. Pick Five: Tom Pernice Jr. ($129,250). The bottom 10 guys on this abbreviated salary list are either first-timers or have played once without much success (or recently). TFI isn't going to say he threw a dart at the list to pick this guy, but ... Balance: $41,750. Hey, buddy, can you spare $1,000,000? Loved them but ran out of slots or into the salary cap: • Adam Scott ($246,750). Thanks for getting that missed cut out of your system last week at the Chrysler Championship. Now, can we get back to knocking some heads together like coconuts and showing the other 26 players how it's done? • Retief Goosen ($220,250). Statistically speaking he has the highest average finish in THE TOUR Championship among this field: the 2004 win at East Lake to go with a third, fourth in ninth. Of course, the fact that he's done almost nothing of note (for him) this season is no reason to agonize over taking him. Or ignoring him. • Ernie Els ($217,000). So this is what's it's come to, Ernie: Tiger and Phil out and you still don't generate enough love to make the top lineup. How about spending the PGA TOUR's offseason winning, oh, three or four tournaments in places like South Africa, Qatar and Dubai and then returning to the U.S. with some confidence? • Geoff Ogilvy ($200,500). Speaking of taking vacations, this guy hasn't played in, what, eight weeks? Back in September he looked like a lock for this week's top lineup, considering his love of traditional courses. Now TFI's afraid he'll return to competition colder than the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. • Ben Curtis ($115,500). The guy has two top-10 finishes this season. Both wins. If he takes this thing, can you imagine the screams of anguish in the press tent Sunday night as the writers try and draw correlations between East Lake prodigy (and unquestioned world-beater) Bob Jones and what would be this guy's rags-to-riches-third-time-a-charm-don't-pinch-him-he's-dreaming season? Hey, what do you know, after three years of trying TFI finally puts together a seven-figure lineup. Maybe it's an omen! Salary Cap Cup results for Chrysler Championship: The main lineup of Vijay Singh ($62,010, tied 19th), Justin Rose ($40,456, tied 25th), Harrison Frazar ($0, missed cut), Charley Hoffman ($0, missed cut) and Nick Watney ($11,713, tied 58th) earned $114,179 and placed 15,615th. Through Week 43 it totaled $4,842,350 and ranked 2,710th. Tough to be a rock star without any players sniffing the top, um, 18. The "Hey, buddy" lineup of Adam Scott ($0, missed cut), Trevor Immelman ($15,642, tied 44th), Troy Matteson ($148,400, tied ninth), Frank Lickliter II ($62,010, tied 19th) and Mark Calcavecchia ($62,010, tied 19th) earned $288,062 and placed 5,104th. Through Week 43 it totaled $3,337,435 and ranked 9,008th. One big week to finish and who knows? Would be lovely to have two lineups in the top 5,000 (pretty please?). Week 43 winner: SOL $1,965,684. Segment Four leader: Can buy game $8,260,263. Have a question or comment for TFI? Send it to him at brettavery@aol.com. |
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