Proven through the brief history of the FedEx Cup is the fact it is a title harder to defend than a bad decision. It is singular accomplishment, not to be duplicated, the Sistine Chapel of somewhat contrived playoff systems.
With the 10th FedEx Cup finale coming to East Lake in less than two weeks, we still await the first back-to-back champion.
If Tiger Woods couldn’t do it, surely it can’t be done.
Jordan Spieth is in play. At the moment.
He kept himself viable Saturday, finishing bogey-bogey and still shooting a 4-under 68 in the third round of the playoff semifinal, the BMW Championship. His place in the FedEx Cup points standings, as ever-changing as the moods in a maternity ward, is currently an uncomfortable seventh. That’s just outside the promised land of the top five, each of whom would be assured of winning the $10 million Cup bonus with a victory at the Tour Championship in two weeks.
Not that Spieth is living and dying by every fluctuation in the points.
“I couldn’t tell you in the last four years at any point in time how many points I’ve had,” he said. “I don’t think about that much.”
“If you’re sixth (in points) and win in Atlanta it would be hard not to win the FedEx Cup. I’m just trying to play a consistent last couple of rounds and gain some momentum.”
He said all that Friday. Saturday he left the BMW scoring area without stopping to talk to those toothy raptors of the golfing media. Just too steamed about the close of his business day to pause for comment.
Actually, there was much to recommend about Spieth’s third round. When he holed out from the sodden rough some 60 yards from the pin for eagle, Spieth was 5 under through his first 11 holes. He was in full Spieth 2015 mode and climbing steadily up the leaderboard.
And, honestly, the entire week had been pretty good to him. He was making a good deal of chicken salad out of a game that wasn’t always spot on. And he got to experience one of the real feel-good moments just before this tournament began, meeting the young Purdue engineering student who, thanks to a corporate promotion, had won a full scholarship on Spieth’s hole-in-one in last year’s BMW Championship.
“It was great to put a face to the act,” Spieth said. “It’s pretty special. We don’t need cars (the usual give-away for an ace). We have enough. To see that make a difference in that way was really cool.”
Things just turned a little nasty, as golf will do, at the end of Saturday when he missed the green of the par 3 17th painfully wide right and then couldn’t make a 7-footer to save par on No. 18.
Later Saturday, Spieth did issue a few utterances to a PGA Tour rep, and they were generally encouraging about Sunday’s prospects.
“I feel really good about where everything’s at,” he said.
“I was 6 under through 15 and I’ll get those (other) ones back tomorrow.”
Those just ahead of Spieth in the race to finish in the top five in points before the Tour Championship are not exactly an unimposing lot. At the close of Saturday, Rory McIlroy was standing in sixth, Paul Casey fifth and Adam Scott fourth. Theirs will be the tournament within the tournament, as Dustin Johnson begins the fourth round with a robust three-stroke lead.
The view from the brighter side top five cutoff line: “You’d be pretty unlucky if you were sixth and won at East Lake and didn’t win the FedEx Cup. It could happen. If you rule out one variable that’s a good thing. I’d like to stay in the top five and good play takes care of that,” Scott said.
The first successful FedEx Cup defense is not yet out of the question; and is something that certainly would add to the conversation at East Lake in just less than two weeks. Spieth has one more round in which to really fuel such crazy talk.
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