San Antonio’s no-show issue
The Valero Texas open has as proud a his Tory as any pGa Tour eVen T. Bu T wi Th Jus T Two of
The world’s Top-50 compe TinG las T week, i T’s in search of a Be TTer field //By Ron SiRak
Ted Powers/aP Pho To
one of the things that gets lost in
the modern sports world—where
every league, team and game seems
to have its own TV network—is the
role tradition plays in fan support.
Team loyalties often are passed
down from generation to generation. If you are a Boston Red Sox fan
or a Liverpool United supporter,
your children and their children will
likely be too.
Also key in the allegiance of
fanatics to their team is rivalries. For
Michigan alumni, the football season
is all about beating Ohio State. For
Pittsburgh Steelers watchers, the
Baltimore Ravens are really the old
Cleveland Browns, and that will
never change.
Consistently, however, short-term
greed gets in the way of long-term
good, no matter what the game.
Expansion thins out the talent and
dilutes the passion at the core of fan
support. Look at college football,
where the hunger for TV dollars has
torn apart traditional conferences,
destroying long-time rivalries as
teams are thrown together with no
shared history let alone any logical
connection when looking at a map.
(Everyone looking forward to that
Syracuse-Wake Forest tussle?)
Although billions are being made, it
should be with this warning in mind:
Forget your past and you will
jeopardize your future.
Which brings us to the Valero
Texas Open, a tournament that just
celebrated its 90th anniversary at
TPC San Antonio. No PGA Tour
event has been held in the same city
longer. The list of winners includes
Walter Hagen, MacDonald Smith,
Denny Shute, Byron Nelson, Ben
Hogan, Sam Snead and Arnold
Palmer. But this year only two
players among the top 50 in the
World Ranking found their way to
the AT&T Oaks Course. The PGA
Tour should view this with alarm.
