Tiger Woods Has 3 Million Reasons to Play in Abu Dhabi and Not Torrey Pines

Tiger Woods recently announced that he would not play in the 2012 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines and would instead go to a tournament in Abu Dhabi. 

This was a mild surprise to the golf world as Tiger normally makes Torrey Pines his first start on the PGA Tour every year. Torrey has been pretty much like an annual annuity for Tiger over the years. He has won there numerous times throughout his career and even picked up one of his 14 major titles at Torrey Pines.  

Remember the 2008 U.S. Open?  Tiger was playing on a broken leg and a bum knee, and had to make an 18-foot downhill slice putt on the 72nd hole to get into a Monday playoff with Rocco Mediate. 

Both were still tied after the 18 hole playoff. They had to play an extra, sudden-death 91st hole before Tiger could finally put Rocco away.

Maybe the decision is not so surprising.  The Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship will offer one of the strongest fields of the year—including all of those top-ranked European Tour players.  Abu Dhabi is an officially sanctioned European Tour event and is also able to offer appearance fees to the players. 

Doug Ferguson, Associated Press golf writer, has reported that Woods will pocket a tidy $3 million to go a couple of rounds in the oil-rich Middle Eastern country.

Tiger is a family man, after all, and has a couple of kids to worry about, with college tuition and what not.  That nasty divorce set him back a few bucks—let alone what alimony costs these days. 

Everyone knows what a drain on the budget a new fixer-upper home in Jupiter, Florida can be.  He also has to cover the cost of the crews for the 200-foot bass boat and GV jet.  It is so hard to find qualified boat captains and jet pilots these days, let alone cooks, butlers, maids, nannies, deck hands and stewardesses, etc.

Bubba Watson earned $1,044,000 for his 2011 win in San Diego.  The Farmers Insurance Open purse will probably be close to that amount again in 2012.  So even if Tiger won in San Diego, he would still lose $2 million. It's tough to turn down that kind of money.

Can you imagine what the tournament director at the Farmers Insurance Open is dealing with right now?  Ticket sales will be at least 30-40 percent less than what they would be if Tiger was in the field. 

Media pass requests will also decrease by at least 25 percent.  This means the tournament gets less ink (aka free advertising), and that decreases the value of the tournament for the main sponsor, Farmers Insurance. 

In addition, lower fan attendance dictates that the charities the tournament supports will have less money to split up to fund their important activities over the coming year.

San Diego homeboy, Phil Mickelson, will show up and headline a quality field of PGA Tour players.  But it takes a lot of Keegans, Hunters, Webbs, Rickies and Bubbas to offset a lost Tiger.

The PGA has always taken a very strong stance against appearance fees for their tournaments.  PGA vice president Ty Votaw said in an appearance on the Golf Channel’s Morning Drive on December 2nd that “the PGA’s job is to make their tournaments attractive enough for the top players to want to play in.”

For the most part they do—especially with $7 million purses, a $30 million bonus pool in the FedEx Cup playoffs and $10 million to the FedEx Cup champion.  More TV exposure in the U. S. translates to more endorsement money for the players, which is way more important than prize money, anyway.

There are still certain events on the PGA Tour schedule that struggle to attract big names and attract deep-pocket sponsors.    

The question becomes: Will some events on the PGA Tour have to offer appearance fees in the future just to get the top players to show up?

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