The PGA Tour has a playoff problem.
If the Tour wants people to take its FedExCup finale more seriously, then it must get rid of its Net Tour Championship.
This is not some novel thought, but I starter writing this on Saturday afternoon. Week 1 of college football was rolling, and Scottie Scheffler was polishing off his very own paycheck game. Scheffler ended Saturday’s third round five shots clear of Collin Morikawa – and at a whopping 26 under through 54 holes on the newly redesigned East Lake (or is it renovated? Restored?). Sources say the $25 million might’ve already be pending in Scheffler’s bank account on Wednesday evening.
Great playing by Scottie, right? I mean, the Tour comms team did tweet a stat that noted Scheffler as the first player in recorded history to lead by seven or more shots after the first round of a Tour event. Surely this one minor detail – Scheffler was 10 under, two shots clear of second place, before he landed in Atlanta – was omitted because of character count. (Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good record!) Deservedly, the tweet got roasted.
Scheffler’s lead would grow to seven on Sunday, shrink to as little as two and ultimately settle at four over Morikawa, the gross champion, with the result never being in any real doubt. Scheffler beat fourth place by 11, and his 30-under winning score obliterated the “tournament record.”
Just like that, the Tour’s season is over – and again, most everything but the players’ pockets feels a little empty.
I commend the Tour for trying to innovate. The switch to the 70-50-30 model for field sizes has been a marked improvement. But the staggered start, now in Year 6, just isn’t it. It’s not golf. It’s not any sport. How silly would it be if Georgia was spotted a field goal before kickoff of the CFP national championship game? Or if we let Katie Ledecky dive in at the other end of the pool in the 800 free, already 50 meters ahead? It’s a problem when Scheffler joins Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh as the only players since 1983 to win seven or more times in a single season and we are left wondering whether an asterisk is needed.
In his State of the Tour presser on Wednesday, commissioner Jay Monahan used the word “fan(s)” 54 times. “Fans are at the center of everything that we do,” Monahan said. “Their voice propels us.”
I wonder how many fans really love this Tour Championship format. Maybe I’m wrong, but it can’t be a ton. This is purely anecdotal, but I texted two of my friends (I think they are friends); both are huge golf watchers, especially when it comes to YouTube golf, and they are close enough to the type of demographic the Tour says it’s catering to. One responded bluntly: I think the format is super dumb. The second buddy was a bit more thorough: I think the purpose of the tournament is wrong. It’s trying to crown the season’s best golfer, but that’s decided (Scottie) and this tournament doesn’t usually change that.
Should the Tour Championship continue to use staggered start?
— Brentley Romine (@BrentleyGC) September 1, 2024
Not even Scheffler, the man most advantaged by this new way of crowning a FedExCup champion, counts himself as an endorser. To him, it’s a “strange format.”
“Personally, I thought the old format, I didn’t have a ton of issues with,” Scheffler said. “… I didn’t necessarily mind that the winner of the Tour Championship wasn’t the winner of the FedExCup.”
Yet, the Tour previously argued that the original format was just too confusing. Now, we have media outlets (including this one) showcasing gross leaderboards on their websites, an Official World Golf Ranking that doesn’t even recognize the net competition, and generally, an unserious vibe around the entire week. (Seriously, I can’t wait until the fall series and Q-School, two segments of the calendar that the Tour needs to promote more.)
The Tour is stuck between two swing patterns here.
It wants the FedExCup to be a season-long race, yet Scheffler’s 1,193-point lead over Xander Schauffele would’ve been completely negated had Scheffler, even with a two-shot cushion to start, played poorly. In the five previous Tour Championships in the S.S.E. (Staggered Start Era), just twice has the FedExCup No. 1 entering the Tour Championship finished there (Dustin Johnson in 2020 and Patrick Cantlay in 2021).
It also craves a compelling playoff. Sure, Rory McIlroy winning the 2022 Tour Championship by a shot after starting the tournament four shots back of Scheffler was thrilling stuff. But consider that no other Tour champion has been worse than fifth in points after the BMW. The staggered start eliminates more than two-thirds of the 30-man field before a tee ball is even struck. This year, it was probably a little more than that.
So, how do we fix this? And don’t take this criticism the wrong way; I want the Tour to succeed.
For one, the Tour needs to fully commit to a true playoff system. Dole out your season-long bonuses before the Tour Championship, and then reset the points for the top 30 so that everyone arrives at East Lake on equal footing. The Tour Championship shouldn’t be a victory lap, a charade geared toward putting an exclamation mark on whomever had the best season. It needs to be a knockout event, where a player’s performance in the previous 34 weeks is thrown out the window; if they don’t bring it at the Tour Championship, they don’t walk away with the big trophy – and check.
Who cares if the Tour Championship is won by Billy Horschel? (I use Billy as an example because I know he won’t be offended.) The Tour is fast headed in a direction in which it’s creating protection after protection to keep its current stars in the spotlight while making it exceedingly difficult for new stars to emerge.
If I had my way, the Tour Championship would be match play. The top two in points would get byes, and when players get knocked out, they would enter a consolation ladder. By Sunday afternoon, we would not only have a first-place bout for $25 million (or less if we want to redistribute some of that pre-East Lake), but 14 other matches for varied sums of cash. We won’t always get Scheffler versus Schauffele, but is Scheffler on cruise control for four days – and 10 shots clear of solo fourth to begin the final round – must-see TV? Did anyone care what McIlroy was doing on Sunday this year? Now, what if McIlroy was going head to head with Ludvig Åberg?
Annual tradition: 2024 Tour Championship played out as a matchplay bracket.
— Barry W (@sacoomba) September 1, 2024
Sahith Theegala beats Collin Morikawa in the final for all the FedEx marbles.
Scheffler gets bronze. pic.twitter.com/MxHvt9JZy1
But let’s say you hate the idea of match play. Well, then how about this:
72 holes of stroke play.
Lowest score wins.
Novel idea, I know.