I know how hard it is to get a discussion about golf going around here, but here goes.
The PGA Tour just ended its official season with what is called the FedEx Championship. It used to be that the player who won the most money over the year was deemed the best. But now they have a system where players get points for their high finishes throughout the season - with big tourneys giving more points than others.
At the end of the season, their is a series of 3 tourneys over 3 weeks. The top 90 point-getters are invited to the first tourney, the top 70 progress to the 2d tourney, and the top 30 progress to the final. Here is where it gets weird IMO. Whoever wins the final tourney is named the season winner - whether or not they have the most points over the course of the season. So arguably, the player with the 30th highest points could end up being declared the champion. (They just changed things this year from an even worse system.)
I’m not a huge sports fan, and I’m not a fan of the proliferation of “playoffs” in various sorts. But this one seems goofy. Anyone up for a discussion?
I attached a link to an article discussing some of this.
I’m not a huge golf fan, but IMO, the entire thing is definitely goofy, made-up, and unnecessary. The playoff thing has only been around for 18 years, and my suspicion is that the PGA created it to goose interest in the PGA tour late in their season, when sports fans may be more likely to be turning their attention to football and baseball.
My guess is some “brilliant” marketing guy at the PGA said, “other sports get better TV ratings during their ‘playoffs’…we should do that, too.”
This is surely the most likely answer.
I also put very little stock into such a scheme.
The only real take-home from yesterday is Tommy Fleetwood winning his first PGA tournament, which made for an awesome story. But everybody knows the actual Player of the Year has been Scottie Scheffler.
You are definitely spot on. But I don’t view it any differently than the Big 10 having a championship, instead of previously basing it on the head-to-head records. Or even the overall NCAA football championship. All about $.
They’ve changed the rules several times. At first I thought it really silly. Most recently, they would give the points leader a stroke advantage for the final tourney - I think they would start at 10 under par. That was really goofy.
They also have a hard time getting players to play in all 3 of the post-season events. If your points are high enough to get you into the final 30 for the last tourney, you can skip the first or first 2 events.
I think they should essentially separate the 2 issues of 1. winning the final tournament, and 2. amassing the most points over the season. So it would be possible for Fleetwood to win the tourney yesterday, but Scheffler to win the championship for having the most points. Of course, that raises the issue of how many points they award for the final 3 tourneys. Or maybe they should give a “golfer of the year” award/bonus at the end of the “season”, and then go to a completely separate set of 3 post-season tourneys.
I stopped being interested in golf when guys split off into LIV. So I don’t really care. But it is pretty challenging for even someone pretty interested in golf (I play at least 27 holes most weeks) to keep track of this. I posted below what appear to be the final standings. They don’t even list the total points for the top 30 players. Since Fleetwood was #5 last week, I’d imagine the points for this last tournament were quite high. Nothing against the guy. And he had a great post-season. But you shouldn’t have to look this hard to figure out what the rules were that caused one guy to be named the winner.
There is no question that Scheffler was the most dominant golfer this year.