In theory, the PGA Tour still has five more events in its Fall Series. The Fall Series commences this weekend with the Viking Classic in Madison, Mississippi, a longtime tour stop, and is followed up with circuit stops at Sea Island in Georgia, then at CordeValle Golf Club, just south of San Jose, then Las Vegas, and finally, Walt Disney World in Florida.
In the olden days prior to 2007, the PGA Championship in mid-August was the de facto conclusion of the professional golf season. Sure, they kept holding tournaments, but by then everyone was tuned into exciting pennant races as well as the action on the college and pro gridiron. If you are familiar with Tiger Woods” very short rookie season following his third U.S. Amateur triumph in late August of 2006, you”ll recall that he played in B-level events vaguely similar to the Fall Series. His first PGA tour event as a professional was in Milwaukee, and he played in tourneys such as the Quad Cities, where he lost at the end to journeyman Ed Fiori, as well at Las Vegas and Disney, where he won.
While the Tour Championship was historically played at the very end of the season, usually after the Walt Disney, it held little interest among the sporting public. It wasn”t that long ago that Woods and Phil Mickelson would fail to even enter the big-money, limited-field, no-cut Tour Championship. There were as disinterested in autumn golf as their more serious fans. They too adhered to the belief that the real end of the golf season was at the PGA Championship.
Then the Fed Ex Cup came along in 2007 with its playoff system and bonus money pool that included a $10 million first-place check. Regardless of the lack of history and tradition, big-time money can still grab the attention of the game”s top guns. Tiger Woods won the eight-figure bonus check in 2007 and Vijay Singh took home the big bucks in 2008.
Yet the system was flawed. Golfers such as Woods skipped the first stage of the playoffs in New York and could still win the big-money first-place prize. Singh would win in New York and then win again the following week in Boston. His lead was insurmountable to the extent that all he had to do was show up in Chicago and Atlanta to collect his bonus check. The Woods experience was like getting a bye while the Singh title chase was like winning the Super Bowl even though you didn”t win your last two playoff games.
To make amends for this hard to understand and potentially irrational system, the fine folks at PGA headquarters adjusted the system after the conclusion of the 2008 season. There was greater movement in the standings as evidenced by Heath Slocum”s win in New York and his jump from 124th to third place. The end result in 2009 was a second Tiger Woods Fed Ex Cup crown. The real result was the system was mired in confusion, second only in bizarreness to the chase for No. 1 in big-time college football.
Then came 2010. Jim Furyk missed his pro-am tee time at the Barclays in New York while Matt Kuchar made all the necessary tee times, won a playoff with a dramatic shot to the green on the first hole, and found himself atop the standings. It was Kuchar”s first win of the year. At Boston during week two, Charlie Hoffman pulled a Heath Slocum, beat a strong field with a superhuman final round, and vaulted himself into the top five.
Dustin Johnson entered the fray, winning at Cog Hill in week three. It was a nice consolation prize after heartbreaks at the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. Johnson, Kuchar and Hoffman had fewer total wins in 2010 than Jim Furyk, Ernie Els and Justin Rose, but that trio of golfers were Fed Ex Cup afterthoughts following their lack of pizzazz in the first three weeks of the playoffs.
Because Jim Furyk played rock solid golf, because he was nine-for-nine in greenside saves, and because the stars were perfectly aligned, he won the Tour Championship last Sunday as well as the Fed Ex Cup series. How aligned were those stars? Well enough to have Hoffman finish in sixth place. Johnson finished 22nd and Kuchar came in 25th. Most importantly, Paul Casey, who we have yet to even mention, came in tied for fourth, meaning that Furyk”s bank account swelled by a combined total of $11.35 million. His four-week playoff run featured the DQ followed by a 37th and a 15th-place finish. Is this great stuff or what?
I”m going with the “or what?” In what sport do you have so much volatility in a playoff system that fans of the game lack any concept of what is going on? While Furyk”s earlier wins at the Transitions and the Heritage didn”t do much for his early playoff status, the current talk is that Jim Furyk and his three wins and a Fed Ex Cup equals golfer of the year honors for 2010.
I don”t think so. It doesn”t matter that the PGA Tour deserves a pat on the back for making golf relevant in September. They deserve rich accolades for pulling it off as successfully as they have. The problem lies in a playoff system that is understandable only to the most gifted of mathematical savants.
In the end, we can”t rely on Fed Ex Cup standings or the PGA Tour staff to determine 2010”s golfer of the year. In reality, there was a four-way tie for golfer of the year. The foursome that tied for this honor includes Phil Mickelson, Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen and Martin Kaymer. The four-way tie may be a bit too much to fathom, but it makes a lot more sense to me than the Fed Ex Cup standings. After all, who wouldn”t trade the cup and the $10 million for another U.S. Open title. Even Jim Furyk feels that way.
