You want to grow. To compete effectively - - even if you weren't going to grow, just to maintain your position - - you look at who you're competing with. And everyone you're competing with is changing to get better, sometimes dramatically.

There is one pressing need, we think, to help us compete, and that is the need to define our season, .. That relates to, first of all, creating a real season, which would include a year-long competition and a dramatic finish to that competition.

An organization needs to be constantly refreshed.

The mathematics are such if you're going to compete in the Cup competition, there's a very significant upside, certainly if you're a consistent top player, to perform well just like you are within a tournament structure. So that is a dynamic, and the fact that the way the point structure for this series will be structured almost dictates if you're going to perform well, you've got to play every week.

The Championship Series gives us what we've wanted for a long time - a culminating end to our season.

You want to grow. To compete effectively -- even if you weren't going to grow, just to maintain your position -- you look at who you're competing with. And everyone you're competing with is changing to get better, sometimes dramatically.

Good tournaments can compete and perform very nicely. And the Tour Championship doesn't do that bad, but it's too far removed. It reinforced to us that if you put something special out there, we can carry the audience with us into September. And if it's a strong enough finish, then the season becomes more important.

George was a tough competitor who, as many golfers know, was a master with the putter. George will be missed by all who walked the fairways with him, and those of us who got to know him outside the ropes.

I think our job right now is to continue to build The Players and make it as good as it can be and probably work harder to connect with fans about it. Stature (as far as The Players being considered golf's fifth major) is something we don't determine; others do that.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to say. We've got so many things going on. Given where we are, on the brink of going to TV (negotiations), I don't want to mislead anyone. But I want to give folks a broad sense of what we're looking at.