If this were 2019, Tiger Woods would be reporting to the first tee of the Tour Championship on Thursday already 2 under. That before he ever put pencil to scorecard. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal. If only life routinely gave you a couple-of-shots head start at daybreak.
Ah, but if this were 2019, Woods also would be starting eight shots behind Bryson DeChambeau, and facing the kind of uphill climb that calls more for a Sherpa guide than a caddie.
The FedEx Cup format is changing again. This is hardly news. It has been tinkered with more than the tax code. But this change promises an even more radical alteration to the concepts of both “playoffs” and tournament golf.
Also, the idea of the Tour Championship as a separate, distinct, recognizable golf tournament will go the way of Bobby Jones’ mashie niblick.
In fact, this will be the final year that a replica of Jones’ “Calamity Jane” putter will be awarded the winner of this week’s tournament because the whole point of this change is to focus attention solely on the finish of the FedCup playoff race.
“There will be one trophy handed out on Sunday (2019), and that will be the FedEx Cup Trophy,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said. “We’re going to find the right way to perpetuate the Calamity Jane.”
On Tuesday at East Lake, Monahan and the PGA Tour’s Chief Tournament and Competitions Officer, Andy Pazder, officially announced the sweeping FedEx Cup changes that had been reported on for weeks. (The schedule change, moving the Tour Championship to August to avoid competing with football, had already been set).
First, fewer playoff events, two of them rather than three to winnow the top 125 to 30 at East Lake.
Next, more money. Always more money. The Tour can’t invent enough new ways to enrich its playing members. So, the FedEx Cup bonus pool goes from $35 million to $60 million. Next year’s playoff champion will pocket $15 million in bonus money, up $5 million from what the poor chump will earn Sunday.
And, then, there’s the method of determining that playoff potentate. This is where it really gets squirrely.
This Tour has struggled mightily to find a simple, understandable way to throw money at these guys. No one really grasped the ever-evolving points system – a player’s place within it had to be constantly calculated and explained over the course of play. And no one was really happy with a situation like last year, when the Sunday glory was divided between FedEx Cup winner Justin Thomas and tournament winner Xander Schauffele.
To have but a single winner at the end of the day, as well as to give fans an easy frame of reference, they basically devised a one-week, alternative universe, upside-down handicap system for these pros. The better you are, the more strokes you get.
The FedEx Cup points leader coming to East Lake begins the tournament at 10 under. In descending order, the next four players in points go from 8 under to 5 under. Nos. 6-10 start the tournament 4 under. Nos. 11-15 start 3 under. Nos. 16-20 start 2 under. Nos. 21-25 start 1 under. The last five just have to wallow around at even par.
Hence, in this scenario, No. 1 DeChambeau would begin the day 10 under, with No. 20 Woods eight shots back.
Whoever actually takes the fewest strokes during the Tour Championship isn’t necessarily the champion of anything. In fact, that likely will be the norm. Last year, Thomas finished a shot back of Schauffele. But under the change in format, Schauffele would have finished fourth.
I’ll pause for a moment here while you unfurrow that brow and wrap your mind around such a departure from the traditions of stroke play.
And, at the same time, you might wonder that if the PGA Tour were in charge of baseball, then Red Sox likely would begin the World Series this year already up 2-0.
When he floated the plan to the Player Advisory Council in May, Pazder said he didn’t know if, “we were going to get blank stares or looks at us like we had two heads because it’s a very different format.”
“And,” he said, “it takes some creative thinking to get comfortable with that.”
“We’re just going to have to become comfortable with it because that the way it is,” said Justin Thomas, in a most reserved kind of endorsement.
Then, shifting back to good company man, he added, “Hopefully – I’m sure it will – it will produce a lot of great drama and a very deserving winner.”
Pazder said that the Tour ran all the numbers – and even enlisted the aid of some brains at MIT – to make sure the stroke advantages of the new system roughly gave players the same chance of winning the FedEx Cup as the current points system.
So, yes, someone could overcome a 10-stroke head start. Anything’s possible. I hear tell a team once fell behind 28-3 in a Super Bowl and still won it – although that seems impossible now.
I’m not going to be that guy who reflexively says that all change is bad – even though it usually is.
Because it’s not that there was a lot of purity to this “playoff” the way it was currently formatted.
Otherwise, we’re going to have to let curiosity be our guide here, maybe even wait to see the new system in play before ultimately passing judgment on it.
Hey, they’re making up this FedEx Cup thing as they go along – and this is but the latest brainstorm. I’m sure there are better ways to fix this, and maybe eventually the Tour will arrive at them.
This much I know – only because it was written out for me:
The scenario for Woods to win the FedEx Cup this week is a most intricate plot. He wins the Tour Championship, and DeChambeau finishes T15 or worse and Justin Rose finishes in a three-way tie for fifth or worse and Tony Finau finishes tied for third or worse and Dustin Johnson finishes in a three-way tie for second or worse and Justin Thomas finishes in a three-way tie for second or worse and Keegan Bradley finishes tied for second or worse.
Anything that simplifies that opportunity to a single number probably should be considered an improvement
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