Should We Kill Off the Pro-Am Tournament?

Last weekend, the Champions Tour had one of their few pro-am tournaments each year with the playing of the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am at TPC Tampa.  That was the tournament where Bill Murray struck a woman with an errant shot and she had to go to the hospital because of it. 

(Pay attention out there!  At least get hit by Phil Mickelson.  He'll give you a signed glove and a couple hundred bucks.)

So, I guess the incident set off some writer for Sports Network.  And, of course, that means that we should kill off every pro-am tournament.

We'll call it a T.E.E. Party. The Total Elimination of Entertainers from professional golf tournaments. This new movement of ours will involve picket signs, slogans, phone calls to congressmen, op-ed pieces, sponsorship by golf pundits, original protest songs, a couple of well-paid lobbyists and, of course, portable toilets. It deserves our best effort.

Groan.  It's not bad enough already that some of the people at the tax day tea parties were an embarrassment to this country, but now we're going to use this in a golf column?  I'll chalk it up to me being tired.

The interesting thing is that the columnist is a Bill Murray fan, but is tired of Murray's golf course schtick.  Here is his (or her?) ultimate conclusion.

There's just simply no compelling reason, no justification, for having these men and women play in actual rounds with actual professional golfers anymore -- and certainly not during a final round like what occurred Sunday on the Champions Tour.

For as awful as the tea party reference was, the columnist may have a point.  Tiger Woods doesn't play in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am because the rounds are so long (and he hates Poppy Hills).  Not to say that tournament format policies should revolve around Tiger's interests alone, but it is an example.  At the same time, though, pro-ams can bring more people to the gate than otherwise might come. 

Being torn on the issue, what is your thought on the paltry handful of pro-ams that we see each year on the PGA Tour umbrella o' tours?