Columnist Dean Juipe: Will extra cash really aid tourney?

Dean Juipe

Friday, April 14, 2000 | 11:02 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Among the rewards Vijay Singh took home for winning The Masters last Sunday was a check for $828,000.

And whoever wins this weekend's event on the PGA Tour, the MCI Classic, will be paid $540,000.

The prize money in pro golf, particularly on the men's tour, continues to escalate at something of a dramatic pace. And, in an effort to uphold the trend, just this week the purse for October's tour stop in Las Vegas received a nice influx of cash.

The Invensys Classic at Las Vegas, as the tournament will now be called, will have a prize fund of $4.25 million and will award the champion $765,000. While those are incredible sums and ones that will reposition Las Vegas back among the upper echelon on the tour in terms of money, what seems to be lost in the discussion thus far is that money alone won't assure a stronger tournament field.

It's not as if a tournament can simply wave money at tour players and expect their undivided attention. In reality, those players are already playing for big money virtually every week of the year, and if they don't like coming to the tour stop in Las Vegas -- with its unusual five-day format that includes amateurs for the first four rounds -- then no amount of financial incentive will be enough.

In a perfect world, Invensys would have latched onto the Las Vegas tournament and abolished that five-day, amateur format. But it didn't, so that's enough of beating that dead horse.

"It was never an issue," tournament director Charlie Baron said Thursday, knowing a question on deleting the amateurs was inevitable with their biggest detractor on the other end of the line. "The format won't change."

Darn.

But on the bright side, Baron is confident the increased prize money will turn some of these millionaires' heads.

"It'll get their attention," he said. "The additional money, plus what we have to offer in the city while they're here, will make a difference for us. Things can only get better."

He added that the tournament was making an effort to exorcise its "28-handicappers" and replace them with a horde of "single-digit players." But even if that happens Las Vegas is apt to retain its reputation as a rather grueling stop on the tour, at least in terms of its playing conditions.

After all, it's the five days and the amateurs -- as opposed to insufficient prize money -- that have contributed to big names like Tiger Woods and David Duval skipping the event.

"But with this extra money and the exposure Invensys is looking for, we might pick up some European players like Darren Clarke and Bernhard Langer," Baron said, pointing to Invensys' international TV connections and goals. "And we might be able to get Tiger here by next year."

There was no raining on Baron's parade and no real reason to question his optimism. He had a productive week and he's enthusiastic about the future.

Armed with a few extra bucks he can go back on golf's recruiting trail, trying to entice the elite players who customarily bypass the tournament in Las Vegas.

We'll see how he fares. We'll see if money carries the same clout when its audience is already wealthy.