GOLF – Woods Facing 60-Round Deadline – October 10, 2006

Tiger Woods has to make a critical decision this week. The player will have to decide before 5 p.m. Friday to decide whether he wants to win the Vardon Trophy. Friday is the deadline to enter the Funai Classic at Disney and Woods needs to play the tournament in order to reach 60 rounds to be eligible for the Vardon Trophy. The trophy is awarded to the player with the lowest scoring average. Woods has currently 55 rounds on the PGA Tour. If he only plays in the season-ending Tour Championship, he would be one round short and would not be eligible for the trophy.

Woods has already won the Vardon Trophy six times, which is more than any other player since the creation of the trophy in 1937. The number of rounds played has become an issue for Woods this year because he withdrew after two rounds from the Nissan Open with the flu, missed the cut for the first time in a major at the U.S. Open, and missed nine weeks coping with the death of his father.

If he decides not to participate to the Funai Classic at Disney, Woods still will be recognized as having the lowest scoring average. He will still be eligible to receive the Byron Nelson Award awarded by the PGA Tour for lowest scoring average. The PGA Tour award is the same thing as the Vardon except the tour only requires a minimum of 50 rounds. The PGA of America, which operates the Vardon Trophy, changed the 50-round minimum to a 60-round minimum in 1988. When the PGA Tour began keeping statistics in 1980, it settled on 50 rounds as a minimum to be eligible for its award for lowest scoring average.

Whatever Woods will decide, the player is already sure to be granted the Byron Nelson Award for lowest scoring average at 68.11. If he skips Disney, the Vardon Trophy most likely would go to Jim Furyk (68.88), who had a comfortable lead over Adam Scott going into Las Vegas.