tiffer67:What exactly is the point of this?
In order to get yourself a $500 gift card you need to trade the equivalent of $3,000 in credits, surely it should be one for one?
However that seems less ludicrous when you consider that the VIP guest access for next years US Open comes in at 10,000,000 credits or $100,000 in earnings. Can somebody please explain to me how the hell anyone is going to accrue that sort of amount in less than a year?
C'mon WGT get your finger out and offer a fairer system of obtaining reasonable prizes at reasonable exchange rates!
If you consider that WGT takes 20% of R-G purses (and the fact that a lot of the winnings will be second- or third- generation winnings), and that you'll probably spend about $250 in balls to get that $3,000, it probably takes more along the lines of $5,000 total to get the $500 gift card, if not more.
WGT has operating expenses, of course, but it's not a very successful business model to take in perhaps $5,000,000/yr and only give out $25,000 in prizes (via credits.)
The immediate winnings from the 500-credit entry fee and free CTTH tournies give the best returns ($150 gift cards, trips to expensive golf courses, etc.) These types of prizes probably cost WGT around $400,000/yr, but, unfortunately it's purely a luck thing. People can win prizes worth $10,000 in a single hour, which is something that would take even the best player over 1,000 hours to do via R-G's (1,500 if you take into consideration the complaint of the OP.)
Unfortunately, us R-G'ers don't seem to be a very high priority for WGT, even though R-G's are quite possibly WGT's #1 source of income (the purchase of clubs being the only thing comparable, to my knowledge.) Their willingness to give out prizes in other competitions is reasonable, but I wouldn't say their prizes from R-G tournies are reasonable. =(