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Sunday, September 28, 2008
FedEx Cup headed for more tweaking
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Blimey, how do you make sense of all this? While the Tour Championship was still in play at East Lake Sunday afternoon, and the winner wouldn’t be decided for nearly a couple of hours later, the man who finished 22nd was hauled before a television camera and presented the FedEx Trophy, and if not the FedEx champion’s check, it would soon be in the mail. And no one was more confused than the champion himself, Vijay Singh, a long way from his Fiji Island homeland.
This was the final round of the Tour Championship, where the FedEx Cup champion was supposed to be determined, based on points earned here and in an extended playoff system. Yet, Singh arrived at the Tour Championship with enough points already in hand to take the prize.
“When they started the FedEx Cup last year, I had no idea what the system was going to be,” Singh said. “I was reminded a thousand times before I started this week — make sure you finish 72 holes, sign your card, count your clubs and everything else.”
That’s all he had to do with the collection of points he had built up winning the Barclay’s and Deutsche Bank, the first two playoff tournaments. “We still, really, don’t understand what’s going on with the points system,” he said. “I had no idea what the system was going to be. It’s hard to tweak it to a point where the last tournament (Tour Championship) is as exciting as everyone wants it to be.
“I mean, no matter how much you tweak it, if somebody goes out there and wins two or three events, it’s all over.”
But, the recipient of the $10 million first prize was glad it was over with no mistakes, but to him, it was weird, “really weird. You make a bogey, you get congratulated, you make a double, you get congratulated. It really didn’t make any difference.” Nor a lot of sense.
On his way to the $10 million, Singh posted rounds of 73-74-72-70, and a final score of 289, which ordinarily would have earned him about $123,500 from the Tour Championship alone - or The Playoff Finale, the name the PGA Tour bestowed upon it in this muddled situation, which bore heavily on PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem.
Oh, it should be pointed out that the winner of the tournament was the young, lithe and tremendously popular — with the opposite sex — Colombian, Camilo Villegas, from the city of Medellin. In addition to his developing game, Villegas has developed a peculiar sprawling crouch to read the line of his putts. He is fitted out with skin-tight jeans, a kind of boxer’s cap, caters to the excessively long stringy hairstyle, and has been publicized by one magazine as America’s “Hottest Bachelor,” interpret it as you will.
He is University of Florida educated who had yet to win on the U.S. Tour until the third leg of this playoff series, the BMW Tournament in St. Louis. Though he has won two of the playoff series, including the one intended to be the “World Series of the Tour,” Singh had built up a commanding number of points in advance, however that might settle out. It should be pointed out that there were 28 other players in the field, that Villegas overcame Sergio Garcia’s five-stroke margin, and won on the first playoff hole, in this case the par-3 18th.
Sunday was the young Colombian’s day, for while Garcia, Phil Mickelson and Anthony Kim dawdled about, Villegas put up a round of 66, covering Garcia’s five-stroke edge and in the process banked $1,260,000 that goes to the winner. So, the series is done for this year, and it’s back to another round of tweaking.
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