Thumbs up for PGA Tour’s playoff revamp
Steve DiMeglio: Tour continues to show willingness to tinker with format
ATLANTA — Overall, the seismic changes to the FedExCup get a thumbs up.
The grand prize for the champion jumps from $10 million to $15 million starting next season, which will make some palms sweat.
The playoffs, which will be in its 13th season next year, are reduced from four events to three for the first time, putting a greater emphasis on each tournament. Coinciding with the considerable changes to the schedule, the postseason will bring an end to the
season before Labor Day, thus escaping the behemoth shadows of the NFL, Major League Baseball and college football.
Then there’s the new Wyndham Rewards Top 10 that will dole out $10 million to the best players for the entirety of the regular season, a proper bonus for months of work, with the points leader heading into the postseason getting $2 million and the 10th-place finisher getting $500,000. FedEx increases its bonus money from $35 million to $60 million.
And among the many alterations to the season-long race to the FedExCup announced Tuesday by the PGA Tour is perhaps the biggest of all — a change to a simplified scoring system for The Tour Championship, the playoff finale.
While the first two events — The Northern Trust and BMW Championship — will award quadruple points compared to regular-season events, The Tour Championship, which will feature the top 30 players, won’t reset points. In fact, it won’t involve any points.
Instead, the FedExCup points leader after the first two playoff events will begin The Tour Championship at 10 under par. The next four players in the standings will start at 8 under through 5 under, respectively. The next five will begin at 4 under, regressing by one stroke per five players until those ranked Nos. 26-30 start at even par.
There will no longer be a need for chalkboards or hightech computers or snazzy graphics to explain confusing scenarios for some player’s march to victory, or an announcer talking about what Player A must do to win the FedExCup, which involves Player B finishing no better than fifth, Player C finishing no better than 10th, Player D finishing … you get the picture.
Instead, just check the leaderboard, and the player with the lowest score at the end of the weekend wins The Tour Championship, the FedExCup and $15 million.
“Win The Tour Championship and you are the FedExCup Cup champion. It’s that simple,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said.
But there remains some head scratching.
Defending FedExCup champion Justin Thomas and 2014 FedExCup champ Billy Horschel said it will take some getting used to, especially if you start 8 to 10 shots back and shoot over par in the first round and are eliminated from contention with 54 to play.
Or, and this is a big one, you could shoot the best 72-hole score and not win the tournament. Can you imagine?
Tiger Woods, can I get a word? You just shot 65-66-6767 for the best total in the tournament, but you didn’t win because you started too far back. Your thoughts?
“No system in any sport is ever going to be perfect,” Thomas said. “We’re just going to kind of see how it unfolds, and hopefully it turns out well. I liked the way that it is now, but like anything, you’re just going to have to get used to it because that’s the way it is.”
“We’ll see how it works out,” Horschel said. “Maybe there will be a need to tweak the scoring system. We’ll see after a couple of years.”
As we saw in the first few years of the FedExCup, the Tour is willing to change things up. Every year the Tour looks to see how it can improve the product.
We’ll see if that will be the case after next year’s FedExCup.