SAN DIEGO — When the NFL expanded its season to 17 games this season, it essentially held the Farmers Insurance Open aloft by the ankles and shook the PGA Tour event until everything in its pockets spilled out.
Down to the lint.
Instead of its cozy spot, an open week before the Super Bowl, the tournament found itself positioned to be crushed by goliath championship games — a clear non-starter for broadcast partner CBS.
The seemingly disastrous dominoes began to tumble from there.
"Do you really want to know?" Farmers Insurance CEO Jeff Dailey told the San Diego Union-Tribune on Friday at Torrey Pines, when asked about his initial feelings. "It was presented as a choice at first. Do you go with Wednesday through Saturday? Or do you go to NBC and keep the Thursday-Sunday format?
"My initial, 'upset' reaction was, let's go to NBC. Then cooler heads prevailed."
The initial ripples of sliding the tournament back a day, bucking golf and television convention, seemed more like a tsunami.
The shortened runway made a costly casualty of the pro-am, a "net $1 million hit" for the Century Club of San Diego, according to tournament director and CEO Marty Gorsich. It scrambled TV coverage. It sliced and diced everything from travel and lodging dates to hospitality and attendance rhythms.
In a blink, everything became risky and uncharted golf water.
"If I had a really good pizza and I shove it down your throat, it doesn't taste really good because you had to choke it down fast," said Gorsich, explaining first blushes to the news. "But if I give you time and let you chew on it a little bit, you kind of get to take it all in. It's a much more enjoyable experience. We didn't get a chance to digest it and think about it.
"Farmers, us, there was a lot of choking on pizza at first. As we got the chance to breathe a little, that's where we started to see, if we had a year to plan this or that, it could be very cool."
Without a Sunday round, the television was shifted later to create near-prime time finishes on the East Coast on Friday and Saturday — a first for a regular PGA Tour event. Golfers began to see benefits, from avoiding pro-am obligations that allowed them to focus on the first difficult course of the season, to an extra open day on the weekend to see family and more easily travel.
Instead of fans rushing to the exits Sunday as the new work week loomed, before the champion clutched the trademark surfboard, there's the time and space to create a bigger celebration.
Sorting through what initially seemed like rubble, organizers saw the chance to make the tournament so wholly rethought that it became a differentiator like the rowdy Phoenix Open and rare others.
Take all those broken eggs and make some high-end omelets.
"The pro-am is an initial hit, but we can create things like a tee-off gala or other unique experiences to replace that financial impact," Gorsich said. "All the other elements are fine. I don't see anything in our old format that says, 'We've got to get back to that.'
"People watching our event on national TV Friday, it might take a year for people to realize that. That's how tradition gets built. It doesn't start in the first year. It's consistency over time for people to learn it and embrace it."
So, get used to Wednesday starts and Saturday finishes. It's probably here for a long time.
Asked if there's any scenario where the tournament shifts back to its traditional Sunday finish next year or beyond, given the cement anchoring the NFL's new schedule, Dailey could not think of one.
"I don't think so," he said. "It's important to us that the ratings are strong, but we still get a tremendous amount of business benefit because we use this as motivation for our top agents around the country. That business benefit for us is probably stronger than a few incremental ratings points.
"If you take the ratings out of it, I like the Saturday finish better."
For decision-makers, it was like a new pair of shoes. The walking is tricky and painful at first, until you break them in.
It sounds like the pizza tastes a little better by the bite.
"The golfers I talked to like it, too," Dailey said. "I won't say who, but someone's prediction was that three or four more tournaments might shift their dates as well."
Creative thinking abounds.
Local Tour mainstay Xander Schauffele wondered if the tournament field could be tightened a bit to play all four rounds on one course with a limited sunlight window in January. A few other players have whispered that, too, after the most recent U.S. Open expanded the cramped and potentially dangerous driving range.
That could address concerns about the range and open the North Course for other money-making options during tournament week.
There are plenty of flies in that ointment, starting with player and Tour concerns about offering fewer spots to less established players trying to break through. The Phoenix Open's field size currently stands at 132, while the Genesis Open in L.A. is 120 — compared to 156 at the Farmers.
Gorsich acknowledged some player discussion about the one-course concept, but labeled the chances "zero percent right now."
"We're a two-course event," he said. "There are no discussions about being a one-course tournament. Some players were last here for the U.S. Open, which built a huge driving range and big locker room. All of that is extremely expensive.
"Each answer leads down a path and it becomes a non-topic at this time."
It's also unclear what San Diego city officials would think, since it could be argued that showcasing both courses during a national event has benefits.
Then again, almost everything about the Farmers Insurance Open is being reconsidered right now.
Those anchovies don't taste quite as bad, after all.
