The FedExCup is the year round points race that has the PGA TOUR players competing to get in the top 70 positions to make the playoffs. The playoffs consist of three tournaments featuring a progressive cut with fields of 70 (FedEx St. Jude Championship), 50 (BMW Championship) and 30 (TOUR Championship). The finale, the TOUR Championship, has those top 30 players competing at East Lake G.C. in a staggered strokes based system based on the player’s performance throughout the entire year. Therein lies the problem, the awkward stagger at the top of the leaderboard.
What’s great about the present FedExCup format
The present format works in so many ways. It has a year-long, continually updated points system for the players on the PGA TOUR. Throughout the year, viewers get to see players competing to get to the top of the FedExCup standings. Additionally, and even more interesting is to see players vying for those last few coveted spots in the top 70 as the calendar year comes to a close. Sure, the overall winner of the year gets a whopping $25 million payout, but last place at the no-cut TOUR Championship still pays $550,000. The FedEx points system is also used to determine the next year’s player exemption status.
What’s not working with the FedExCup Tour Championship
The PGA TOUR has not quite figured out how to pull the FedExCup all together to maximize excitement through the final event. The dominance of Scottie Scheffler throughout 2024 placed him in first place in the FedExCup points going into the TOUR Championship. That gave him a starting score of -10 before he even teed off in the final round. That’s a ten shot advantage over the likes of Justin Thomas and others. It would take an actual collapse of Scheffler to make the grand finale exciting and competitive and that’s just not going to happen.
The dilemma is in both creating a system that rewards and recognizes year long performance but still creates a tour championship event that is competitive. Over the years, the system haas been tweaked. In 2008, Vijay Singh didn’t even need to play in the final event and he would have still won the overall FedExCup. Additionally, up until 2018, a player didn’t need to win the final TOUR Championship event to win the overall FedExCup. Thus, welcome to the starting score stagger beginning in 2019.
Ideas to make the TOUR Championship event more interesting
It’s said one should not point out a problem without also offering a solution to that problem. A solution is difficult for the PGA TOUR because it’s a tour of tradition, so out of the box thinking is not plan A in the playbook typically. A segment of the PGA TOUR fan base are purists and not excited about change, not that there is anything wrong with that. However, the existing scoring system places random first day starting scores to players isn’t neither pure nor traditional. So, I feel anything is on the table for consideration.
Idea 1: Copy what all the other great sports of the United States are doing. Use the year long points system to create a top 30 ranking system for the final event. Technically, it would need to be top 32 to make the brackets work. Then have the players go head to head until the final match with the overall winner taking the $25 million dollar prize. You could even play out all matches in consolation brackets into the final day as even the payout difference between 15th place and 16th place is still almost $100,000. This is a money event and the interest alone on a finals match that pays $25 Million to the winner and $12.5 million to the runner up would be interesting to watch.
Idea 2: So, I’m sure the match play model has been looked at and maybe the viewership math isn’t adding up or maybe it’s too drastic of a change. How about creating advantage to the year long performers by giving them “tee box selection rights” on a designated number of tees in the TOUR Championship. The way this would work is instead of giving them strokes to start the week, give the top point earners a number of times they could move up to a shorter length tee box. So, instead of getting a starting score of -10, Scottie Scheffler could get 10 tee box advantages to use when he feels most helpful.
For example, the 15th at East Lake is a 215 yard par 3 to an island type green. Set a forward tee box on that hole that plays 150 yards. It takes a lot of the risk out of the hole and also gives the player with tee box rights a chance to even make birdie. Here’s the thing, the player still has to hit golf shots and still has to make putts in order to capitalize on their advantage.
There would be strategy and talking points for players and fans alike. When should a player use their tee box advantages? Should they hold them until the final day? Do they spread them out on pre-selected holes? There’s so much there to un-pack and get excited about. Most importantly, year long performance is rewarded and all players start even par and have to earn the tile of 2024 FedExCup Champion.
Bret Mickel
I was just talking to a friend about this earlier in the week. No excitement for the final tournament. Tee box selection is an interesting idea. I’d like to see that tried.