The FedEx Cup, in something akin to its current guise, only arrived in 2007, but the PGA Tour’s Tour Championship has been around since the late ’80s. I’m not old enough to have any sort of a meaningful opinion on what the tournament was like pre FedEx’s arrival, but I’m old enough to know that everything they’ve tried since 2007 has failed to capture the imagination.
That debut year, Tiger Woods topped the season-long rankings, didn’t bother playing the first playoff event, then won two of the next three, including the Tour Championship. But he could’ve sat out the Tour Championship as well and still been guaranteed victory in the FedEx Cup.
The following year, Pádraig Harrington won two majors and was honoured as the PGA Tour Player of the Year, but because he had two bad weeks at the first two playoff events, didn’t make it to East Lake.
Fast forward a decade, and apart from Bill Haas getting up-and-down from the water on the final hole to win in 2011, and Rory McIlroy beating Ryan Moore in a playoff at the grand finale to deny Dustin Johnson overall FedEx Cup victory in 2016, the rest have all been of the damp squib variety.
And changing the format again hasn’t really helped that, at least not when it comes to the Tour Championship. The real drama of the climax of the PGA Tour season doesn’t come at East Lake on the final weekend, it comes at the Wyndham Championship the week before the Playoffs begin, and at the first and second playoff events.
Who gets into the top 70 and has a chance at playing their way into the top 50 and earning Signature Event exemption for the following season. Who makes the top 50 and then has a chance at tying up their Masters invite by qualifying for the Tour Championship. Those are the things that have kept me interested over the past three weeks.
Who wins $25 million this week? I really couldn’t care less. And that’s the problem with the Tour Championship. Sure it’s a big deal for the players; even multi, multi-millionaires don’t turn their nose up at the chance to add another 25 mill to their bank accounts, But trying to sell it as a big deal to the fans? It’s never going to happen.
And that’s the elephant in the room. We don’t really care. Everything pre-April is viewed through the lens of Augusta National – who is playing well, who wins to secure their invite, which big-named player is out of form, and so forth. The PGA Championship in May, the U.S. Open in June, and the Open Championship in July, after that, even the most hardcore of PGA Tour fans switches off to an extent.
Unless there’s a Ryder Cup coming up, but even then, the FedEx Cup Playoffs and the Tour Championship are viewed through the lens of it – who put’s their hand up for a captain’s pick, which player already qualified looks out of form, which of the two teams look better equipped to win….
Without that to frame it, it’s just more of the same. Just another 72-hole strokeplay tournament where, unless you’re deeply invested in a player’s finances, it’s hard to get in any way excited for.
So, the million-dollar question – or the $25 million question, if you like – is whether anything can be done to change this? And I think there can.
Besides the BMW Championship which moves venue each year, taking the first playoff event on the road would also be an improvement. Memphis is FedEx’s home, so it’s understandable that they’re keen to have it as a host city, but Memphis in August is hot, humid, and generally horrible to be thunderstorms are a virtual guarantee. Engaging fans in a stop-start tournament is tough, and though Mother Nature can be unpredictable at the best of times, the laws of probability should dictate that you try to avoid certain places at certain times.
The same could go for East Lake, but the Tour remain determined to honour FedEx and longtime partner Coca Cola, whose headquarters are in Atlanta, of which East Lake is a suburb, and Jay Monahan admitted as much when asked about the possibility of venue changes for the first and final playoff events in the near future.
Still, the most obvious method of improving and adding real juice to the playoffs has always been there, and continues to be overlooked.
Turning the Tour Championship into matchplay is the perfect solution. Starting with 28 players, those ranked 13 through 28 playoff in a typical matchplay bracket until there are four remaining. Those four then play the players ranked nine through 12, with five through eight awaiting and finally, one through four entering at what is effectively quarter final stage.
This way, performance over the regular season and two previous playoff events still have a real bearing on a player’s chances of overall victory – chances which naturally diminish for each additional round you have to play.
And the best part of all is that matchplay golf, something that fans have been crying out for, is back on the table.
Now that’s a Tour Championship that I’d be looking forward to.
How much money is on offer still won’t make the slightest bit of difference to most of those watching, but head-to-head combat certainly will.
And that’s what matters most.