Thanks in part to the World Golf Championship money, the cutoff to keep a PGA Tour card is not No. 125 but No. 131 on the money list.
The tour decided two weeks ago to return to what's known as a "soft 125," meaning the cutoff drops according to the number of foreign players who happen to be higher than No. 125 on the money list.
This year, that number is six -- Jose Maria Olazabal (44), Sergio Garcia (52), Paul Lawrie (69), Lee Westwood (104), Colin Montgomerie (109) and Jean Van de Velde (116).
Oddly enough, none of the above is ranked this high because of the two $5 million WGC events thus far. Olazabal, Lawrie and Van de Velde got their cash from the majors, while Garcia did his damage in the GTE Byron Nelson Classic and PGA Championship.
Whatever the case, the "soft 125" will remain in effect for 2000, along with these modifications.
• Only PGA Tour members at the beginning of the year, or those who choose to sign up during the year (by winning) will be included on the official money list. A separate section of the money list will show official money earned by nonmembers.
• Foreign players who make enough from the majors and WGC events to get into the top 125 will be allowed to join the PGA Tour the following year.
In the meantime, Emelyn Aubrey is No. 131, and will keep his card if no one passes him after the Southern Farm Bureau Classic this week in Mississippi.
The Tour Championship used to be the final tournament that decided the money winner. Now that Tiger Woods has nearly a $1.2 million lead on David Duval -- and the WGC event in Spain next counts as official money, anyway -- the only money race in the final week of the PGA Tour season is at the bottom.
TIGER'S LIST: Remember that famed list that Tiger Woods kept taped to his wall, which documented all that Jack Nicklaus accomplished?
A couple of clarifications are in order.
For one thing, Woods doesn't know if the list is still around.
"I think when we remodeled the house, it was taken down," he said.
Also, he only charted Nicklaus through his amateur career, from junior golf through his NCAA title at Ohio State and his two U.S. Amateur victories.
"First time he shot below 70, when he started playing the game, when he won his first amateur tournament, his first junior tournament, his first tour event, and it showed the age," Woods said. "That's as far as it went."
Not the U.S. Open as a 22-year-old rookie? Not the 18 professional majors?
"I found that out later," Woods said with a smile. "And then the list became really long."
STRANGE TV: First Ken Venturi for the Presidents Cup, now Curtis Strange for the Ryder Cup. Job requirements for becoming a cup captain must include work as a television analyst.
The difference is that Strange is relatively new to the broadcast booth and is still competing on the PGA Tour. It stands to reason that as Ryder Cup captain, he might be less inclined to criticize a player who could wind up on his team.
Only Strange doesn't see it that way.
"My job is not to be critical. My job is to analyze," he said. "If you hit a bad shot, the world sees that you've hit a bad shot. My role is to explain why that might have happened."
Strange found nothing wrong with his analysis of Jean Van de Velde on the 72nd hole of the British Open.
"All I said about Van de Velde was he was making stupid decisions. I didn't call him stupid," Strange said. "Smart people make stupid decisions. We've all gone through that -- well, not quite what he's been through."
LPGA CLASS: Kellee Booth passed up more than $30,000 this summer to retain her amateur status. She didn't take long to start making up for that.
Booth, who won five amateur titles this year, blitzed the field in the Q-school finals last week to earn her LPGA Tour card in her first event. She finished four rounds on the LPGA Champions Course at 8-under 280, seven strokes ahead of Jean Zedlitz, and won $6,000.
"As hard as I've seen people I know work to get their cards, to get through on the first try is such an accomplishment," said Booth, 23, was among 19 players to earn their cards.
Other rookies in the class of 2000 are U.S. Amateur champion Dorothy Delasin, 1998 NCAA champion Jennifer Rosales and Gloria Park, who won the 1996 Australian Ladies Amateur title as a 16-year-old.
SENIOR SILLY SEASON: Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson, one of the most formidable Ryder Cup partnerships ever, will join forces again Dec. 11-12 as one of four teams in the Diners Club Matches at Pelican Hill Golf Club in California.
The Diners Club Matches, created in 1994, are coming off a one-year break because of the Presidents Cup, but will be on the silly-season schedule through 2002. It features four teams each from the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour and Senior Tour. The purse is $1.2 million.
Along with Nicklaus and Watson, the other Senior Tour teams are Bruce Fleisher-David Graham, Allen Doyle-Dana Quigley and Gil Morgan-Jay Sigel.
Meanwhile, the Senior Tour will offer an awesome threesome for the Wendy's Three-Tour Challenge -- Nicklaus, Watson and Hale Irwin.
DIVOTS: Now that the Solheim Cup has changed sites, it might be changing dates. The women's version of the Ryder Cup set next year for Loch Lomond, could be moved from October in order to get live coverage from BBC television. As it is, the BBC will televise the World Match Play Championship, scheduled for the same week. One date under consideration is the last week in August. ... Tiger Woods will carry a Titleist bag through the end of the year, which means he could have one logo for the first two rounds of his end-of-the-year tournament and another logo for the final two rounds. ... The LPGA Corning Classic is raising its purse by $50,000 to $800,000, the 15th time in 21 years the tournaments has upped the ante. ... The four wild-card selections for the Senior Match Play Championship in Puerto Rico are Raymond Floyd, David Graham, Al Geiberger and Jack Nicklaus.
STAT OF THE WEEK: Only 30 players are eligible for the winners-only Mercedes Championship in Hawaii, which could wind up with a smaller field than the Tour Championship because some foreign golfers don't play that early in the year.
FINAL WORD: "I set some goals this year. I always set them very high at the start of the year, and this is the first year that I've achieved all the goals that I've set." - Payne Stewart, on the eve of last week's National Car Rental Classic.
