Event is hoping for a May date

The PGA Tour announced its new television partnerships Wednesday and promised to reveal its future schedule within a week, and that will be news to some of the tournaments still in limbo.

The BellSouth Classic in Duluth, Ga., has asked the PGA Tour to move its date into May, but tournament director Dave Kaplan is as in the dark as anybody about what will happen.

"I'm fairly certain we're not going to be the week before the Masters (Tournament)," Kaplan said Wednesday. "It's not written in stone. I'm very optimistic we'll be moved to May."

Kaplan is not alone in holding his breath to see what the new template for the revamped PGA Tour season will be.

The Tour has kept its plans under such tight wraps that even the tournaments are unaware of their futures.

Even after Tour commissioner Tim Finchem announced that The Players Championship would officially move to the second week in May in 2007 and that its spot on the March schedule would be filled by a reformatted World Golf Championships event at Doral, other tournament directors in every event from the start of the Florida swing until the Masters were still unsure of their standing.

Kaplan, however, believes the PGA Tour is sympathetic to their plight as regards to weather. Since moving to a pre-Masters spot on the schedule, only one of seven BellSouth Classics at the TPC at Sugarloaf had a Friday cut because of inclement weather.

"I've heard them say we've spent our time in the barrel," Kaplan said. "I think they'll work to help us out."

The PGA Tour has only given out piecemeal information about the new schedule.

In addition to The Players Championship being moved to May, the Tour Championship at East Lake will be moved from November to September and serve as the culmination of a late-season series of four events called the FedEx Cup.

The only confirmed site and date for the three other FedEx Cup events is the Barclays Classic at Westchester, which will start the series on CBS.

Finchem mentioned that Doral will take the place of the current WGC-American Express Championships sponsored by CA (formerly Computer Associates). That has left every regular tour event from the Florida swing on to be determined.

When it's all completed, the Masters Tournament will likely review its current qualifications standards.

Masters chairman Hootie Johnson said last April that giving automatic invitations to PGA Tour event winners might be reconsidered in the future.