East Lake Greens Fried; No Pro-Ams, Spectators

Bob Harig at ESPN does a nice job of summarizing the issues at East Lake. The PGA Tour had been aware of the staggering heat wave over the summer in the Southeast - Harig mentions that the August in Atlanta featured "28 days of 90-degree-plus temperatures and 10 in the 100s."

The Tour, according to Harig's piece, claims that they became aware of the conditions last week:

When it became apparent to PGA Tour officials last week that there was a major problem, extra steps were taken to try to bring the grass along. Over the weekend, the idea of moving the event to another course was briefly considered, including a move to TPC-Sugarloaf, a tour-owned course in suburban Atlanta that is home to the AT&T Classic.

But, the Tour knew of the green conditions at East Lake. After all, Adam Scott had played a corporate outing there and notified some of the players of the lousy conditions. That means the Players knew also. They knew something was coming and likely were waiting for a strong response from the Tour. And, man, were they mad - at least several of them - when the Tour uncermoniously put a two page flier in their lockers to let them know about the conditions and resulting schedule at East Lake for the Tour Championship.

"So for the tour to come to us [Saturday] and say after all this time there is a problem with the greens, it's kind of a shock," Els said. "This is the FedEx Cup. A lot of money has been spent, the players have played their butts off to get to this point. To me, it's unacceptable."

Nevermind the sudden interest in the FEC from Els. He hits the main point right on the head. The Tour had an awareness of the problem in August at East Lake and did not respond by changing venues or doing enough to save the greens at East Lake. Instead, there will be no practice rounds, no spectators until Thursday (and maybe even spare few through Sunday now), and no pro-am (Lefty will love that).

This is another off course black eye for the PGA Tour and the FedEx Cup. Each week, the great on course action has been matched with something horrible off of the course.

Here's a handy chart to help explain the situation:

Event	AWFUL	GREAT
Barclays	Woods gives himself round 1 bye	Stricker wins in great showdown with Choi
Deutsche Bank	Els WD; Lefty blindsides Commish on TV	Mickelson-Woods with raucous crowd
BMW Championship	Mickelson WD; byebye Chicago; BMW-ification	Woods puts on putting clinic for final 63
Tour Championship	Fried grees; poor Tour response	????