Why Is Tony Romo Playing On The PGA Tour?
Tony Romo is playing in the alternate Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship this week via sponsor’s exemption. Some love it; others not so much.
But Tony Romo, the retired NFL quarterback, is easily more famous than any other player in the tournament. That appears to have been enough to earn Romo a spot through a longstanding backdoor for players who don’t otherwise qualify: the sponsor’s exemption.
Many of them recognize that anything that helps the PGA Tour’s business helps increase the prize money they play for. As was the case with Curry, there are some that grumble about more deserving players being left out for the sake of a promotional gimmick.
“This is simply a negotiating point between tournaments and the Tour, because they’re separate organizations,” said Stewart Cink, the 2009 British Open winner. “Whatever the tournaments need to do to get a little bit more exposure for their field or make it more attractive for fans, I think they should be allowed to do it.”
Another Tour veteran said he had strong feelings on the subject, but didn’t want to upset sponsors. Shaking his head, he said, “I’m still waiting for my chance to go run routes for the Patriots.”
“It’s not rocket science,” Romo said. “If you can hit a golf ball and you can hit it—if you hit a 5-iron, you hit it 205 yards and you can put it to a back-right pin and fade it in there, they’re going to respect you. And if you can’t, then you’ll probably get some blowback.”
Romo is listed as a 0.3 handicap, which requires only a bit of rounding to make him eligible. On the other hand, handicaps are based only on the scores players choose to post. Romo hasn’t posted any scores since last September. He withdrew from a mini-tour event in Texas last month after shooting an opening-round 81.
Grayson Murray needed a sponsor’s invite to qualify for a Web.com Tour event in 2016. He tied for 10th place, earning him a spot in the following week’s tournament and starting a run that got him to the PGA Tour last year. He has since won one tournament and nearly $2.2 million in prize money.
The sponsor’s invite, Murray said, “turned my life around. That’s the backside of giving it to guys who don’t do this for a career.”
But Cink pointed to another upside: The sight of a celebrity struggling against workaday pros only shows people how good the pros really are.
“The fact is we’re talking about the Dominican Republic tournament—I don’t even know the name of it,” Cink said. “If it wasn’t Tony Romo, we probably wouldn’t even be talking about it.”
As of this posting, Romo was +1 thru 13 holes–better than 14 Tour pros.
Update: +4 thru 15, beating one pro.
