US Tour: Next year's Tour Championship has been put back two weeks to give players more time to prepare for the Ryder Cup team, the PGA Tour said yesterday.
The Tour Championship, the fourth and final event in the lucrative FedExCup play-off series, will take place from September 25th-28th, one week after the Ryder Cup in Louisville, Kentucky.
The date change was approved by the PGA Tour's policy board and relayed to Tour members and the media by PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem.
"This move provides a one-week gap between the third play-off event, the BMW Championship, and the Ryder Cup so as not to adversely affect either the Ryder Cup or the Tour Championship," said Finchem. "We felt it was important to give those members of both the US and European teams the ability to prepare for the Ryder Cup while also focusing on the Tour Championship the following week."
The event will be played for the fifth year in a row at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. The Ryder Cup is being staged at Valhalla Golf Club from September 19th-21st. Finchem also announced the 2008 PGA Tour schedule which will offer a total prize-fund in excess of $278 million (€190 million) from 48 events. The Tour will begin in Kapalua, Hawaii (January 3rd-6th) with the elite winners-only Mercedes-Benz Championship and conclude with the final event of the Fall Series, the Walt Disney Classic at Lake Buena Vista, Florida (November 6th-9th).
The World Golf Championship events will open with the Accenture Match Play Championship in Tucson, Arizona in February followed by the WGC-CA Championship at Doral in March. The third and final stop in the high-profile series will be the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio from July 31st-August 3rd.
