There”s nothing like the playoffs. Whether it”s Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA or the NHL, fans are riveted by the elimination, do-or-die nature of the contests. The same is true of the NCAA basketball playoffs that feature a one-and-done mentality. Regardless of how they do it, fans are more likely to tune in during the playoffs, and ratings always seem to spike when there”s a pivotal seventh game involved.
Yes, there”s nothing like the playoffs ? except in professional golf. This weekend the PGA Tour is just outside New York City at Ridgewood Country Club for the playing of the Barclays, the first stage of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. The top 125 Fed Ex Cup point leaders are entered at Ridgewood. Next week the top 100 advance to the Deutsche Bank Championship at the TPC of Boston during Labor Day weekend. The following week features the low 70 golfers as they tee it up at Cog Hill outside Chicago for stage three at the BMX Championships.
After taking one week off, the top 30 linksters advance to the final stage at the Tour Championships contested at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
When the dust finally settles, someone will be declared the Fed Ex Cup champion and will receive a $10 million bonus check for his efforts. Others among the top 30 will receive bonus checks in descending amounts based upon where they finish in the playoff chase. The most unique thing about the Fed Ex Cup playoffs is that the season-long points that were accumulated during the course of the past eight months carry over on a sliding scale. When the Cleveland Cavaliers entered the NBA playoffs last spring, they were the No. 1 seed in the East. Yet once the playoffs began, all of their wins were the basis for seeding and nothing else. They were on equal footing with teams that had sub-.500 records. In the case of the golf playoffs, Phil Mickelson enters the Barclays with a lot more points than Tiger Woods and those points will stay with him through the completion of the series five weeks from now in Atlanta.
There have been a few hiccups in the Fed Ex Cup series since it first came to fruition in 2007. For example, in 2008 Vijay Singh won the first two playoff tournaments and from that point onward he simply had to show up and complete the final two tourneys to win the Cup and the bonus money. The PGA Tour decided to tweak the points system for 2009 so that the Fed Ex Cup championship wouldn”t be over long before it was over. Using the football comparison, the PGA Tour didn”t want its playoffs to conclude with the top player merely taking a knee over the final 72 holes. Suddenly, the new, improved Fed Ex Cup playoffs were all about volatility.
We got to see volatility firsthand in 2009. Heath Slocum came into the playoffs in 122nd place, just three spots beyond the non-exempt cut line of 125. He won the Barclays at Liberty National and jumped from 122nd place to third in just one week. Steve Stricker won at Boston the following week and jumped into first place. Tiger Woods, who won the four tournaments prior to the four majors, regained the No. 1 spot with his win in Chicago. Woods held onto that spot during the final week even though Phil Mickelson won the fourth and final stage at the prestigious Tour Championship.
So how many of you even recall the volatile happenings of the PGA Tour playoffs from 2009? I would gather that a whole lot more sports fans can recall Butler University”s run to the NCAA finals or the New Orleans Saints feel-good triumph in the Super Bowl than have any memories of golf and its playoffs. In the end, the Fed Ex Cup playoffs only make sense because golf”s top performers play against one another four more times than they did in the pre-Fed Ex Cup days of 2006. Back then, golfers such as Mickelson and Woods basically closed up shop after the PGA Championship, avoiding the big bucks and limited-field Tour Championship even when they were eligible.
The Fed Ex Cup series allows the world of professional golf to stay within the first three pages of the sports section at a time when college football and the NFL are just starting and as baseball season is coming to its conclusion.
Yet someday you”ll look back on all this Fed Ex Cup playoff talk and realize that you recall just about as much about it as you do when it comes to knowing who had the best record in the National League or who won the NBA”s Pacific Division. Even a mere two years after the fact, more people will recall that Tiger Woods won the 2008 United States Open at Torrey Pines over Rocco Mediate than will remember that Vijay Singh won the 2008 Fed Ex Cup series and that big bonus check.
As long as golf has its Masters, United States Open, British Open and PGA Championship as part of its major championship grand slam series, the Fed Ex Cup will always take a back seat. Someone will receive a $10 million bonus check on Sept. 26 in Atlanta, and they will be gracious when accepting the big and oversized check. Yet if you were to ask Steve Stricker, Camilo Vilegas, Rory McIlroy or Dustin Johnson whether or not they”d be willing to trade all that cash for a green jacket or a claret jug, every one of them would take the major title over the $10 million in Fed Ex bucks.
The PGA Tour”s Fed Ex Cup playoffs got under way on Thursday at Ridgewood Country Club. Then it travels to Boston, Chicago and Atlanta. When it”s over, there will be a declared Fed Ex Cup champ. After that? Well, it”s not a season-ending playoff because after the Fed Ex Cup concludes, the PGA Tour will visit Madison in Mississippi, Sea Island in Georgia, San Jose, Las Vegas and finally Disney World. The money will count and the players will be vying for the top-125 exempt list. There will also be a little exhibition match in Wales called the Ryder Cup. I hear that the Ryder Cup is really dramatic golf theatre, kind of like the NBA playoffs.
It”s all pretty strange. Seems like someone at PGA Tour headquarters got this whole playoff idea by watching a lot of NASCAR.
