Here we are on the eve of the FedEx Cup playoffs and quite frankly the buzz is that there really isn't any buzz about it. As one player, who asked not to be identified, told me at the PGA Championship last week, "I am quietly going to show up at the Barclays still clueless on it but with the knowledge that it will be more money in my bank account." A good portion of the players didn't understand the process and other than some players trying to get into the Barclays in the last couple of weeks I haven't found one pro that has changed his playing schedule and added more events, just to get a better ranking and give himself a better chance at winning.
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Players, media and fans are realizing that this isn't really a true playoff system because of the 144 that will play at the Barclays, at least 100 of them have very little chance to win, unless they win three of the four events. Plus all of the money that we have heard about, including the $10 million for first place, is not a check but deferred compensation (money not taxed until it is received but a person can invest money immediately) that won't be available to use for years to come. Yes the PGA Tour has painted a rosy picture of this but frankly if this was an earthquake it would register about a 1.0 on the Richter scale.
So how did all of this go so wrong?
Tim Finchem and his generals worked very hard putting this together the last couple of years and have staked the future of the PGA Tour on the success of it. Realistically all of it isn't wrong, it did shorten the year, it did try to give closure to the year, it just needs to be tweaked. The concept is good but you can't think of ending the year with four weeks of playoffs like football, baseball and basketball, it's got to be something that the wealth is spread throughout the year with the season broken into segments and the top players from each segment meeting at the end of the year for the closure. If the PGA Tour realizes that playoffs could happen in March, May and September then they could have the closure and end the year on a high note. All it takes is some tweaking, just remember, 20 years ago a lot of players were laughing at the PGA Championship and now it's the premier major. The same with the Players Championship, many scoffed at the thought of it being considered a major but who knows, it's very high up on a lot of players' list of great events for the year.
How the FedEx was conceived:
In 2005 PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem was faced with a serious problem. The PGA Tour was getting killed in the period between the PGA Championship and the Tour Championship, months that are dominated by football. At the same time, the PGA Tour season didn't have a final phase like football, baseball and basketball had in which the season ends, the best play each other in playoffs which leads to one big matchup that determines the best team for the year. Yes golf had the Tour Championship to end the season but it was just an event that the top players of the year got together for one big paycheck, it never really proved anything.Unfortunely for Finchem and the Tour, the true playoffs of golf are the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and the PGA Championship, events that he doesn't have control over. With the TV contracts up for renewal and the networks balking over the high cost of doing business it was obvious that Finchem had to figure out a different way that the PGA Tour schedule would not only be different but shorter, plus he had to add value to all of the tournaments and make the John Deere as important as say the Wachovia Championship.
Since Finchem doesn't control the majors, the only thing of substance that he has control over was the WGC events, The Players Championship and the Tour Championship. In reality the WGC events are controlled by all of the tours around the world, so Finchem just couldn't turn them into playoffs because then the whole tour (being those over 50th on the money list) wouldn't benefit plus how do you allow non tour members into the playoffs?
At the same time Finchem needed to make more events bigger to appease the networks, who always wondered why they had to pay top dollar for a tournament that has Tiger every year and one that has problems getting a handful of top-50 ranked players. Having Tiger and Phil and Ernie as much as possible is the goal for the networks and since Finchem can't control that he had to figure out a way to get them to more events, thus making the networks happy.
So with his closest advisors they divised what they thought was a way to make the tour more appealing to fans, players, media but most importantly television excutives. What they did was "borrow" the way NASCAR makes every race important. They took each event and came up with a point system for the year to put players in a proper order based on their performance that would seed them for a playoff series that would end at the Tour Championship. At the same time Fincheim eliminated eight weeks of the year in order to basically end the golf season in September right when football was just getting into high gear. At the same time he got FedEx to pay for it and thus was born the FedEx Cup. Of course on paper it sounded good, the greed of winning all this money at the end of the year in a playoff would surely have players wanting to play more. That was the thought but the PGA Tour still hasn't learned the magical lesson, money doesn't get the best players in the word.
The final goal for the FedEx Cup if things work out just right is for players that were one, two and maybe even third in FedEx Cup points going into the Tour Championship also as leading contenders on Sunday at East Lake playing for all the marbles.
Dreams are always nice to have and Finchem's plan seemed good, so good that after getting FedEx to sign on he got CBS, NBC and Golf Channel to buy into the new and improved PGA Tour. Everybody (except ABC and ESPN who were leery about it and had other problems) bought into the series which would solve several issues, first giving TV a new playoff system in which the top players would participate but most of all the series was to give fans a chance to root for players to accumulate points but more importantly the idea was that players would participate in more events during the year to gain more points for a better ranking in the playoffs.
Unfortunely this never really happened.
Dawning of the new era
The first event would be at the Mercedes Championship and it was pegged by the PGA Tour as the dawning of the new era with players starting to accumulate points. In looking at the fields in the first part of this year, if anything less top-25 players showed up as only six of the first 17 events showed better fields compared to 2006. On top of that none of the players talked or seemed to care about the FedEx points, plus the media really never grasped the race, in a way making fun at how nobody really cared. Yes the networks promoted it, but that was in their best interest and they needed to help make sure the FedEx Cup works.So instead of players participating in more events and regular tournaments getting more marquee names, it was business as usual like in previous years. Matter of fact if anything many players took more time off between the Masters and the British Open, just because they wanted to rest up before the grueling stretch of golf between the British Open and the Tour Championship which during that nine week stretch there would be two majors, one World Golf Championship and four FedEx playoff events.
So what has caused the lack of interest on something as important for the PGA Tour as the FedEx Cup?
There are so many thoughts on this you would be reading this for days to come but the biggest negative is the lack of learning how the system worked. Some also resisted the change just looking to show up and cash a nice check, the FedEx Cup is such a big cash cow everyone from Tiger to the 144th player will be cashing nice checks. Matter of fact that is the big problem on the PGA Tour, there is too much money for anyone in the top-150 that it makes it too easy to just show up, hope to play well and cash a check. In a way, having 144 players qualify made it seem like hey, we are all going to cash a nice check on this and move on to another nice check. So by not having a tough target, like say 90 instead of 144, created little interest among the players to hunker down from January to August.
Still according to the PGA Tour in scenarios run in working out the system, it's supposed to be almost impossible to win the FedEx Cup if you aren't seeded in the top 15 before the first event, the Barclays. In a way that's telling a team like the Detroit Tigers last year that it's nice that you made it into the playoffs but you can't win the World Series. Still the system had to be worked out to make sure that the game's top marquee players would make it to the Tour Championship. It couldn't be like the Accenture Match Play in which top players could be beaten in the first round and leave the event with non-marquee players at the Tour Championship. In the long run the prize money made it easy, finish 10th and you get $500,000. But this is were the system made it too easy not to care, finish 30th after four grueling weeks of work and get $175,000 but if you just play three weeks and finish last (70th) you get $110,000 and just for showing up at the Barclays and finishing dead last gets you $32,000. That is equal to the same money that Gary McCord made in 1985 for finishing 140th on the money list.
Another thing, there was no thought process and strategy taken into account, for the year nobody really changed their ways, as a matter of fact many of the players didn't care about the FedEx Cup until the British Open. Another problem was the reality that the playoffs would be four straight weeks, for many it's a lot of events to play in a row right after the British Open, WGC Bridgestone and PGA Championship. It made for a tough nine-week grind at the end of the season.
The PGA Tour will probably not ever admit it but that is too many important things left for the last nine weeks of the year, something that is causing a major overload for many players, media and fans. That in itself has created problems.
But the biggest problem with the system is that it's not a playoff at all. When the Barclays tees off on Thursday it will have the feel of a regular PGA Tour event with 138 players. Even in basketball, which many claim has too many teams going to the playoffs, at least half of the teams are eliminated for the playoffs, but at the Barclays 70% of the players with a tour card will be in the field and the next week in Boston, 60% of those with a Tour card will be there. That isn't really a "true" playoff in many eyes it just seems to be an extension of the regular season.
So is there a way to make this better?
Absolutely.First the point system is OK and most of it should carry over. But where the system falls apart is the way it's delivered. Right now this is a yearly system, stretching over 33 weeks and comprising 36 different tournaments. So in the course of the 33 weeks how can you be excited about the first part of the year when there isn't any importance put on it? In a way the failure of the FedEx Cup is that the first half of the season isn't a focus like the last ten weeks are. So in a way the first half of the season and possibly the first two-thirds doesn't have the importance as the end.
The next flaw is having too many big events at the end of the season. Two majors, a World Golf Championship and then four playoff events in a span of nine weeks is bad and needs to be addressed. Quite frankly you can't have more than three good events in a row in order to get all of the best players. Yes everybody except for Tiger will play four weeks but will this happen next year and the year after? Probably not, it's too much of a grind. For this to succeed the PGA Tour has to come true with the real reason for the FedEx Cup, making every tournament important from the first week of the year through the last. They have to give their TV partners a chance at every event being important and having a good field, so the Tour needs to make sure that the Cup is stretched out so that the first 11 weeks are as important as the middle 11 weeks and the last 11 weeks.
My solution for doing this is to break the year up into three different seasons in which every eleven weeks or so, points will end, a week later a qualifying event will take place so that the top players will get to go to the Tour Championship. After the first phase happens, the cycle goes again with another qualifier at the end of that. Then another cycle with a playoff and the leaders of the three playoffs get together at East Lake for the final playoff at the Tour Championship.
Lets look at how I would set this up in a hypothetical season. First of all, we would use the same point system that is in use during the year. The start would come at the Mercedes-Benz and go through the Sony Open in Hawaii, the Hope, the Buick Invitational, the FBR Open, the AT&T Pebble Beach, the Nissan Open, the WGC-Accenture Match Play, the Mayakoba Classic and the Arnold Palmer Invitaional. Now we have to switch the Palmer since it's a limited field event, but after the Palmer the PODS Championship would be our eleventh and final event for points. After that the Honda Classic would be our first playoff event. We like all the three playoff events, the Barclays, The Deutsche Bank and the BMW Championship, but unfortunately since all of them are North where you couldn't have a tournament in March, one has to leave the playoff scheme. My choice is the Barclays because it's in a area that really didn't need the hype, maybe the tour would have a rotation schedule that would help all the events.
Still I would make the first playoff event the Honda Classic, played on a great course (PGA National) to end the first phase. Now I wouldn't allow 144 players in any of these three playoff events because I feel that too many players ruins the tour playoff sprint and won't have players alter their schedule to add events That is part of the secret, make it hard for someone to get into it, even Tiger if he only plays in one or two events. We want it to be important to qualify for these events and to have 144 player fields loses the importance. So I would only allow 90 players into these events. Now the bottom feeders will say this isn't fair, they should be allowed to complete, quite frankly my answer is that now you have three chances in a year to get in and if you're not good enough you shouldn't be allowed in.
As for the three playoffs, like the first one at the Honda Classic, I would retain the same point system that is in effect starting this week, 9,000 for first place, 5,400 for second, 3,400 for third going down to 650 for 20th spot. Now the difference of my system is that the top-20 and ties from this event will get automatic byes into the Tour Championship. Now the reason for points is at the Tour Championship the points will be carried over from the three playoff sites and that the point system for the closing Tour Championship of 10,300 for first, 6,200 for second and so on will be added to the points from the three playoff events. The way you win it is getting the most points at all of the three playoff sites plus the added points from the Tour Championship. The key to winning is getting the most points, so if you win all three playoffs you will be a shoe-in to win the bonus for the year. That's why we will allow 20 and ties from each playoff, it will give players like Woods and Mickelson the incentive to play more because the more points collected at each playoff site makes the task easier at the Tour Championship.
The important aspect of this is that you make the importance to get points three times a year, not one. So the first third of the season is as important as the last third.
Now that you have a grasp of it, let's look at the second third of the season. It would start at the WGC-CA Championship, the same week as the new event in Puerto Rico, then go through the Shell Houston Open, Masters, Verizon Heritage, Zurich Classic of New Orleans, EDS Byron Nelson, Wachovia Championship, Players, AT&T Classic (Atlanta) and then end at the Crowne Plaza Inviational at Colonial. That would be 11 events in 10 weeks and then the second playoff event which would be the BMW Championship would be played. Again, points added up and the top-20 again win berths for the Tour Championship.
After that the last phase of the FedEx Cup will happen, the beginning has to be redone because the Memorial doesn't want to go a week before the U.S. Open but for the sake of getting the scheduling kind of close, you would have the Stanford St. Jude Championship, the U.S. Open, The Memorial (week after U.S. Open), the AT&T National, the John Deere Classic, the British Open and U.S. Bank Milwaukee, the Canadian Open, the Buick Open, the PGA Championship, the Bridgestone and the Reno-Tahoe Open, followed by the last qualifying spot at the Wyndham. Then you would have your final playoff event at the Deutsche Bank followed by the Tour Championship. Of course the last part of the season has a lot of important events but it's been trimmed back from the way it was this year by eliminating two events out of the equation making it a bit more manageable.
But the most important aspect of this is spreading the playoffs throughout the season and making the first third of the year as important as the last part. Now many will say that playoffs end the year, but in golf look at what is considered the playoffs now, the majors. They are in the middle part of the year and are spread from April through August. So the tour should take that into consideration and adopt a system like this. Again, golf is much different than any other sport so by having playoffs during the year work, you just need to then have some closure to the year with one final event and this will take care of things. Again, this will help the overall year and get interest for the Cup all year, thus making this more feasible and add value to the TV network contracts.
Is this something that is going to bring great interest in years to come?
Was the year dragged on too long that nobody cared about the FedEx Cup?
After a month of the British Open, WGC Bridgestone and the PGA Championship do we think that we have any energy in the tank for four more weeks of "important" golf?
Is every week that Tiger Woods shows up a "playoff" week?
Do we even care for another "important" series of golf, we have four majors and three World Golf Championships, is that enough?
The idea has merit, it just has to be tweaked?
Tell us what you think on the FedEx Cup forum, give us your thoughts and answers.
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