Furyk questions need for PGA Tour rivalries

To watch the telecast of the final round of the PGA Championship, and read the seemingly endless media accounts of same, the birth of the Tiger Woods-Sergio Garcia rivalry Sunday at Medinah Country Club will ensure professional golf's survival well into the next millennium.

But Jim Furyk, who had virtually a front-row seat for the showdown, said he isn't so sure the PGA Tour needs such a rivalry.

"Tell me if I'm wrong, but when (Jack) Nicklaus and (Arnold) Palmer owned the game, although it was a great rivalry, I thought people complained that (one of) two guys were going to win the event every week," Furyk said.

"And now that the fields are so much deeper and it seems like anyone can win an event every week, now we're whining that there is not a rivalry. When Gil Morgan and Hale Irwin were tearing up the Senior Tour and they let Larry Nelson win once in a while, everyone was whining last year that the Senior Tour was boring, so are rivalries really that good?"

Furyk, who tied for eighth at the PGA Championship and was in Las Vegas Monday to make an appearance as the defending champion of the Las Vegas Invitational, said it is a little too early to thrust such high expectations on the 19-year-old Garcia.

He also suggested that CBS, which televises the PGA Championship as well as roughly half of the PGA Tour's tournaments, had a vested interest in overplaying the Woods-Garcia rivalry-in-the-making.

"Who had the telecast, CBS?" Furyk said. "I think they're trying to make a story out of something, make it a bigger story than it really is, to make it exciting and make people want to watch (golf) more often.

"But by doing that, they slighted David Duval. Until the PGA, he was the No. 1-ranked player in the world, as far as I remember, and was still leading the money list. I think they're missing the boat, maybe."

Not that Furyk has anything against the effervescent Garcia, who clearly had the gallery on his side at Medinah.

"Sergio Garcia is a great player, don't get me wrong, and I'm sure that sooner than we all believe, he's going to be right there as one of the top-ranked players in the world, but let's not put the cart before the horse with one event," he said.

Furyk, who played in the group immediately ahead of Garcia's on Sunday, agreed that the youthful Spaniard's enthusiasm for the game is infectious.

"It's kind of neat to see someone that excited because we were all that excited at one time," Furyk said. "In five years from now, he's still going to be excited but he's not going to be doing the Mario Brothers going up the fairway. But it's nice to see."

It also is exactly what golf galleries don't get from Duval, and one of the media's biggest criticisms of the PGA Tour's leading money winner.

But Furyk said the media can have short memories when it comes to their criticism of Duval.

"It's kind of a double-edged sword; when you're emotional and it doesn't go your way, everyone says, 'Well, he let his emotions get the best of him,' " Furyk said. "They say that about Tiger, but then they want to see him smile and pump his fist when he does well.

"You can't have both; you're either a Nick Faldo or a Ben Hogan and you're stone-faced out there, or you're a Craig Stadler or a Tiger Woods and you let your emotions show on your sleeves. They want you to be stoic when you're doing bad and they want you to be jumping up and down when you're doing good.

"You can't be like that, it's either one way or the other, and you can't change a person. With David Duval, he's his own person and maybe he's a little different than the rest of us, but we all are different. You have to accept him for what he is and he is one hell of a player."

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