FedEx Cup to offer $15 million to winner next year

ATLANTA » The bonus pool for the PGA Tour postseason doubles next year to $70 million in a revamped system that gives a head start to top players at the Tour Championship and pays $15 million to the FedEx Cup champion.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said Tuesday the changes were designed to make the FedEx Cup finale easier for fans to understand and to avoid the potential for separate winners of the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup.

“You take these changes and you combine them with the new and improved schedule, and we think this is a significant step forward,” Monahan said.

The changes include a more compact schedule next season that ends Aug. 25, a week before football begins. The top 10 players in the FedEx Cup during the regular season are part of a separate $10 million bonus program that pays $2 million to the No. 1 player. The FedEx Cup playoffs are reduced from four events to three, with the winner of the Tour Championship being the FedEx Cup champion. The Associated Press reported on the format changes for the Tour Championship three weeks ago, and players have been mulling over them. One of the concerns is essentially handicapping the field for the FedEx Cup finale at East Lake. Instead of everyone starting the first round on the same score, the No. 1 seed starts at 10-under par, with the No. 2 player at 8 under, then 7 under, 6 under and 5 under. The next group of five players are at 4 under, all the way down until the final five players in the 30man field are at even par.

The winner is determined by his score to par, not his 72-hole score.

“We now have a single leaderboard,” said Andy Pazder, the tour’s chief of operations. “As play moves on through the week, we’re just looking at a scoreboard. So every viewer, every spectator and every player on the golf course will know precisely where they stand at any moment.”

Under the current system that ends this week, points are reset going into the Tour Championship so that all 30 players have a mathematical chance to win the FedEx Cup, and the top five only have to win the tournament to capture the $10 million bonus.

A year ago, Xander Schauffele won the Tour Championship and Justin Thomas, the runnerup, won the FedEx Cup. It was the second time there were two winners on Sunday. The other was in 2009, when Phil Mickelson won the tournament and Tiger Woods won the FedEx Cup.

Bill Haas at No. 25 had the lowest seed of any FedEx Cup winner when he won in 2011.

Pazder said the tour applied the new model to the previous 11 years and the same player won every FedEx Cup except for 2011.

The tour said there would not be a separate purse for the Tour Championship.

The other big change was the WyndhamRewards Top 10 program, which pays out $10 million to the top 10 players in the regular season. Monahan said that might encourage players to enter the final regularseason event, the Wyndham Championship, to try to secure the No. 1 seed or at least improve positions going into the playoffs. This year, Dustin Johnson had the most points in the regular season by 83 points over Thomas.