PGA Tour finally got FedEx Cup playoffs right, just in time to ruin them. It’s an impossible product to sell.
The PGA season effectively ends after the British Open. The latest Tour Championship format was a chance to change that. Instead, match play (yawn) is on the way.
It was a historic Sunday afternoon at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club in the penultimate Tour Championship in its present form, which begged the question: Why change?
With the exception of contrived, boorish, international gimmickry, golf will never be relevant after majors season ends. With apologies to the British Open, golf’s not particularly relevant after Father’s Day and the final round of the U.S. Open. This was proved again last weekend when everything was up for grabs: golf’s biggest money, its MVP trophy, a Tiger record, all swirling around the game’s biggest star.
And all most sports fans cared about was if Bill Belichick’s lousy college football team would win in Ireland (they did; ugly), how many NFL teams would keep four quarterbacks (four teams did, including the Eagles), whether Aaron Donald would unretire to join Myles Garrett with the Rams (he did; yikes), and if the Brewers and Rays are for real (TBD).
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Meanwhile, golf’s most monied weekend delivered. It was a closed, $40 million tournament with mostly the same old names, but it delivered more drama than any 16-man, single-elimination tournament will deliver when the latest format begins in 2028, the year after FedEx’s deal expires with the Tour.
This is the brainchild of a panel of existing Tour stars and new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, the latest attempt of Big Golf to extend interest to compete with MLB’s stretch run, the NCAA’s kickoff frenzy, and the NFL’s annual four months of dominance. Past formats have included cumulative points systems that rendered playoff events (as many as four of them) moot, as well as a system that awarded the best players with pre-tournament handicaps that absurdly skewed the odds of winning the Cup.
Currently, players compete for FedEx Cup points to determine the field for a playoff tournament for the top 70, which winnows the next field to the top 50, which winnows the next field to the top 30, the winner of which wins the Cup and the $10 million first-place check.
It is imperfect, but it is simple, and it is elegant.
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Beginning in 2028, a bifurcated series of Tour events will assign qualifying points to determine the top 90 golfers, who will compete in a stroke-play tournament to determine a top 32 in points. That group will compete for a week in round-robin, match-play in pods of four. The two top players from each pod advance to a Sweet 16, single-elimination, match-play tournament to determine a playoff winner.
The problems:
Match play is boring, even if it winds up at non-traditional venues like Pine Valley or Bandon Dunes. The Ryder Cup is the only exception, but that’s more about jingoism and theater than it is about golf.
Stroke play is a truer test of quality. There’s a very real chance that Min Woo Lee and Viktor Hovland would have been the finalists had the 2028 format been used this year. Yawn.
This year’s tournament absolutely delivered.
Got it right
The best golfer of his generation came from three strokes down for a three-stroke win to claim his second FedEx Cup title and surpass the winnings of the best golfer of any generation.
Scottie Scheffler passed Tiger Woods and became the all-time leading money winner in PGA Tour history.
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The win, Scheffler’s third of the season, his second of the playoffs, and his 22nd of his career, surely secured his fifth straight Player of the Year award. It will be announced in December, and the five in a row ties him with Tiger. (The award has only existed since 1990, so it postdates Jack and Arnie and Gary Player, but Tiger also won it three times in a row and 11 times overall.)
Before the 30-man Tour Championship there was, incredibly, some debate over whether Scottie should win it over a handful of other players. This, even though Scheffler had a lead of more than 1,400 points over the next closest Tour Championship qualifier; had won two tournaments; and led the Tour in second-place finishes (five), top-5 finishes (13), scoring average (by nearly three-quarters of a stroke), birdie average, greens in regulation, scrambling, and, with more than $20 million in the bank, had earned more than $6 million more than his closest competitors — Matt Fitzpatrick, Wyndham Clark, and Cameron Young.
Uphill battle
At any rate, Scheffler took care of business — a business that he has dominated. Since Official World Golf Rankings began 40 years ago, his 207 weeks at No. 1 are third-most in history, including the last 172 weeks, the third-longest streak in history. He recently ended a streak of 78 consecutive cuts made, sixth-best in history.
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In a world of self-promoting social media wankers, he’s about as interesting as warm skim milk.
It’s not his fault. In the midst of golf’s most divisive era, Scheffler won’t say anything controversial. In the midst of America’s most heated political climate in 60 years, Scheffler is apolitical. He’s a retiring Christian family man who tries to play the best golf he can every time he plays.
He lacks the additive abrasion of Bryson DeChambeau. He lacks the international appeal and frank assessments of Rory McIlroy, a glib Northern Irishman, or Jon Rahm, a prickly Spaniard.
Exhausted
More than anything, the Tour’s long, top-heavy schedule is its own worst enemy.
Its best tournament, the Players Championship, happens in March. Its most beloved tournament, the Masters, happens in April. Its best major tournament, The PGA Championship, now comes in May. Its toughest test, the U.S. Open, is in June. Its oldest and coolest tournament, the British Open, is played in July.
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By August, all but the most rabid golf fans (hand raised) are burned out. Every other year the casuals need the eight weeks between the British and the Ryder Cup to refuel. (We’ll keep ignoring the President’s Cup until it matters.)
As LIV dies and its prodigals return, the Tour Championship in its present form only would have become better. Now, instead of being virtually assured of having DeChambeau, Rahm, LIV stud Joaquin Niemann playing against Rory and Scottie at East Lake on the final Sunday of the 2028 season, you’re guaranteed to have no more than two of them.
More than likely, you’ll have none of them.
