Faulty Sim Card

Michael Sim’s eloquence is as impressive as his shot making.

Though the Australian is privately frustrated with the PGA Tour, he didn’t whine about it upon his arrival for this week’s Nationwide Tour Championship at Daniel Island in Charleston, S.C.

He was straight forward in outlining his concerns directly to PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem during a Tour function on the eve of the event. He used his clubs to follow up with a memo to Tour headquarters that was as powerful as it was respectful.

Sim poured in eight consecutive birdies on his way to an 8-under-par 64.

By moving atop the leaderboard after the first round of the season-ending event, Sim raised an important question: Why is he playing?

After winning what’s commonly called a “battlefield promotion” to the PGA Tour in late August with his third Nationwide Tour victory of the season, shouldn’t Sim be playing the Frys.com Open this week?

What is the point of your superiors trumpeting your promotion when they’re actually keeping you in the same old job?

Sim, who turned 25 Friday, is playing the Nationwide Tour Championship because he couldn’t get access to the Frys.com Open. His newly promoted status isn’t good enough to get him into this week’s Fall Series event. In fact, it wasn’t good enough to get him into Justin Timberlake’s event in Las Vegas last week, either. The only Fall Series event Sim has played is the Turning Stone Resort Championship, and he got into that with a sponsor’s exemption.

When Sim won the Christmas in October tournament in Kansas City in August, he became the ninth player in Nationwide Tour history to win a same-season promotion to the PGA Tour. It’s a terrific “promotion” on multiple levels for the PGA Tour’s developmental circuit, but it doesn’t work anymore.

The lack of access Sim is experiencing ought to frustrate every pro who tried to win the promotion. It should frustrate sponsors who align with the tour. It feels like false advertising.

In fairness to the PGA Tour, it is important to point out that Sim’s plight is partly due to the Tour’s new FedEx Cup schedule. The so-called “battlefield promotion” category was instituted in 1997. That was before the FedEx Cup and the Fall Series. The nature of the FedEx Cup, where the playoffs eat up a five-week chunk of the schedule, has changed the nature of the way the rank-and-file play. There is now a mad rush to get into events just before the playoffs begin and then into the limited five Fall Series events afterward.

As winner of a “battlefield promotion,” Sim moved to No. 25 on the Tour’s All-Exempt Priority Rankings list. That ranking falls behind last year’s Q-School and Nationwide Tour graduates. Next year, he moves to No. 22 as a fully exempt player, ahead of this year’s Q-School and Nationwide Tour grads.

“The promotion was designed to be a conditional access category,” says Andy Pazder, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of tournament administration. “The thought process is that you wanted to give Q-School and Nationwide Tour graduates the opportunity to get into as many tournaments as possible. The thinking was that the person who wins the promotion should come behind that group because he has fully exempt status locked up for the following year. It might be oversimplifying by saying the promotion was supposed to be icing on the cake.”

Before the FedEx Cup, there was more icing to go around.

After Sim failed to get into Justin Timberlake's event last week, he played the Nationwide Tour's Miccosukee Championship.

"My attitude wasn't very good last week," Sim said. "I wanted to be playing in Las Vegas. I'm back to where I was mentally now. I want to win this week."

The dilemma for the PGA Tour is by improving the priority ranking of a “battlefield promotion,” it hurts the previous year’s Q-School and Nationwide Tour grads who are fighting to keep their cards.

“Michael understands that it’s important for guys on the top 125 bubble to have access,” says Bud Martin of SFX Golf, Sim’s agent. “He’s a great kid, and he doesn’t want to take an opportunity away from someone else. But what it really comes down to is an issue of what is a ‘battlefield promotion?’ What is the perception? How is it marketed?”

The bottom line is that there is no getting around the feeling that Sim has been wronged, that something promised him isn’t being delivered. Martin says that’s the issue Sim wants Finchem and PGA Tour officials to understand, because there will be others who feel this sting.

“I wouldn’t be shocked if the rules were changed,” Martin said.

Martin said he wouldn’t mind seeing the PGA Tour grant three-time Nationwide Tour winners like Sim exemptions into Fall Series events.

“We always look at our eligibility to make sure we think it matches up with our objectives,” Pazder said. “But I wouldn’t say change is imminent.”

Without change, the Nationwide Tour risks looking like a tour that doesn’t live up to its promise. And promise is what that tour is all about.