US Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has got to be more than a little worried… The Wachovia Championship, one of the tour’s premier events, had no sponsor after Wells Fargo’s $11.7 billion acquisition of Wachovia Corporation resulted in the cancellation of their contract with the US Tour. “Tickets were within five days of being printed when we stopped the presses,” tournament director Kym Hougham said.

But the good news is that the tournament will go ahead with Wells Fargo assuming sponsorship. “We know the tournament will happen,” Hougham said. “We'll still sell out the tournament, but it may be later than normal.”

So although golf might be off the hook in the short term – all of its tournaments have sponsorship deals until 2010, with some of the deals through 2012 – it's the long term that really concerns Finchem as several second-tier sponsors have began pulling out.

Six to eight of the presenting sponsors of the Sony Open have pulled out “some who had been with us for years,” tournament director Ray Stosik said. “We thought they would continue, but the economy forced them to make drastic changes.” The Arnold Palmer Invitational has also been hit, with one of the three presenting sponsors, who tournament director Scott Wellington declined to identify, has also pulled out of the event. “I firmly believe we'll come out of it,” Wellington said, “but we'll take a hit next year.”

The situation is even worse for LPGA Tour. Last week Thursday it was announced that ADT Security Services would not be renewing its contract with the LPGA, which has already lost four sponsors this year. The tour has also waved goodbye to the Fields Open in Hawaii and the Ginn Tribute in South Carolina, a sponsorship that leaned heavily on real estate. Ginn has consolidated its two LPGA events into one. SemGroup sponsored an event in Tulsa, but it filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago. Safeway, which sponsored tournaments in Phoenix and Portland also consolidated and now has only the Portland event.

In short, it’s chaos out there, and without Tiger Woods to pull the crowds and the sponsors (it is rumoured that doctors have booked him off for no less than 20 months) 2009 looks to be a bleak year for golf in the US.