From the conclusion of World War II through the 2006 season, the PGA Tour’s annual schedule remained virtually unchanged. The season started in January and February with tournaments in Hawaii, Arizona and California. The tour relocated to Florida for the month of March. April marked the beginning of spring with play throughout the South. The Masters was contested in Georgia with other events held in South Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans and Texas. By then it was late May and the tour played throughout the Midwest and the East for the remainder of the summer. Some tourneys came and went, but the geography of the tour was the same.
The PGA Championship was the final major of the year and it was historically held during the third week of August. On the Tiger Woods-era tour, many of the game’s biggest stars would put away their sticks in late August and resume their golfing schedule the following year. They didn’t need to play all season long because they were making big money. Sure, they might play in a Silly Season event in November like the Shark Shoot Out or the Skins Game, or they might even go to the Southern Hemisphere and play in a big-money tourney in South Africa or Australia. In most cases, the top professionals were done for the year when the PGA Championship concluded.
That meant fields were limited when it came to star power throughout the autumn portion of the calendar. You weren’t going to find Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson teeing it up at the Canadian Open, the 84 Lumber Classic, Disney World, Mississippi or Las Vegas. The season concluded with a big money grab contest at the Tour Championship for the top 30 money winners during the last week of October. Yet even that event had issues as golfers such as Tiger and Phil blew off the Tour Championship on occasion.
Professional golf was irrelevant during the fall season. Golfers of note weren’t teeing it up at Greensboro or Madison, Mississippi, and even the most avid of golf fans were focusing on the baseball playoffs, the NFL and college football. Regardless of its 80-year history and tradition, tournaments such as the Texas Open had B-list champions such as Bart Bryant, Tommy Armour III, Tim Herron, David Ogrin and Bob Estes. Past Texas Open champs were once named Hagen, Nelson, Hogan, Snead, Palmer, Crenshaw and Price, but those days were long gone.
The tour’s commissioner at that time, Tim Finchem, wanted to the make the professional game more relevant throughout the season. With the financial support of Fed Ex, Finchem and his staff concocted a four-tournament playoff series that would play out through the month of September. The money would be eye-popping, even to the millionaire regulars of the PGA Tour, and golf fans could easily ignore an Alabama-Western Kentucky football game in September to watch golf as long as the game’s top performers were playing.
The four-tournament Fed Ex Cup playoffs would pay out $10 million to the season-long champ with golfers farther down the line collecting seven-figure bonus playoff checks. The first week would be contested in the New York area and Barclays would sponsor what used to be the Westchester Golf Classic, a regular tour event in June. Week two would be played in Boston and Deutsche Bank would be the sponsor. Deutsche Bank had begun the tourney in 2003 and they got to keep their traditional Labor Day weekend date. The Western Open, historically contested in the Chicago area, would be the third Fed Ex Cup playoff tournament. The Western was usually played over the Fourth of July weekend and it was the game’s third-oldest tournament after the British Open and the United States Open. The Western would go away and become the BMW Championship and its field would be limited to the final 70 linksters on the Fed Ex Cup points list. The Tour Championship would be moved up to the end of September, still have just 30 contestants, and go a long way in determining the overall Fed Ex Cup champion for the year. The game’s top performers were now playing four more weeks.
The PGA Tour offices did all this by fiat, which resulted in jilted sponsors such as 84 Lumber and a loss of tradition in the case of the Westchester and the Western. The first few years of the Cup featured a points system that didn’t always make for a playoff feel. For instance, in 2009 Heath Slocum barely got into the first playoff event, the Barclays, finishing 124th among the 125 who got into the field. He surprisingly won that weekend at Liberty National and amazingly jumped to No. 3 in Fed Ex Cup points. The previous year, Vijay Singh had a career year and he went into the final Fed Ex Cup tourney, the Tour Championship, with zero pressure on him. He had already locked up the $10 million bonus purse and could have shot four consecutive 90s and still won the thing.
Down through the years, the folks at PGA Tour headquarters have tweaked the points system to the extent that a one-hit wonder can’t jump 121 places in one week nor decide to no-show during the final four and still collect the big money. In fact, anyone among the top five after the first three playoff tourneys can take home the Fed Ex Cup by winning the Tour Championship. Last year, Jason Day won two Fed Ex Cup events, but because Jordan Spieth was among the top five when he won the final event, he had enough points to finish ahead of Day in the standings.
The Barclays teed off at former United States Open site Bethpage Black on Long Island this past Thursday. The 2016 version of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs are in full swing for the 10th year in a row. A decade ago I wrote derisively of the Fed Ex Cup plans, speaking emotionally of the demise of my beloved Western Open to the cash cow that is the PGA Tour. My column was read online by the No. 2 man of the PGA Tour, Ty Votaw, who ended up calling the Record-Bee office in Lakeport to complain about my negativity. Ty had too much time on his hands.
I still miss the Western even though the BMW champ does get his name on the old Western Open trophy and tourney proceeds still go to the Chick Evans Scholars Foundation. However, the main point is that the Fed Ex Cup playoffs have shown themselves to be a big hit with the members of the tour as well as the public. We get more occasions to see the game’s top performers compete and we get to watch great golf through September. Happy 10th anniversary to the Fed Ex Cup playoffs.
