PGA Tour: Play-Offs, WTF Finals, DC: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Congrats to Brandt Snedeker on his Greensboro 59 and his wire-to-wire Wyndham win, a sign that he's fully recovered from injury at last. Would think he'd need another win for Furyk to take Sneds seriously as a Ryder Cup wild card, but good to see him back in the winners' enclosure.

2).I always enjoy the Greensboro tournament, love the look of the Donald Ross "Sedgefield CC" course; I suppose it's a bit short for today's pros, but each hole looks as if it fits, and scoring is low, but seldom ridiculously so.
Anyway, we go from Donald Ross last week to Tillinghast's gem at Ridgewood CC this week. (Then two more Donald Ross courses, Aronomink and East Lake after Round 2 at TPC Bawston.)
This will be the fourth time Ridgewood has hosted the Northern Trust Championship with Vijay winning in 2008, Kuchar in 2010 and Mahan in 2014. The course has never staged a Major but Jerry Pate won the US Amateur there, Trevino won the US Senior Open and Watson the Senior PGA - six top class winners there.

3).Of the 125 pros qualified, at least five will be missing: Cauley, Fowler, McIlroy, Rodgers and Stenson; assume Rickie, Rory and Henrik will be playing the Dell tournament outside Boston.

4).FedEx still pays out a lucrative bonus each year. Woods has won the $10M jackpot twice, but also finished 2nd & 3rd once each in amassing $25.3M - none for four years though.
And Vijay, Furyk, Bill Haas, Sneds, Stenson, Horschel, Spieth, Rory & Thomas have all won the $10M (and much more) once.
But these consistent contenders have also banked a small fortune:
Dustin: $9.1M
Stricker: $8.6M
Mickelson: $8.4M
Kuchar: $6.5M

5).The FedEx Play-Offs is meant to reward excellence, but most years at least one pro qualifies without achieving a Top Ten finish all season - this year Charley Hoffman followed up his Presidents Cup appearance with nothing better than a 12th place finish at Augusta. Last time he failed to earn at least one Top 3 was 2008, and 2005 since his last effort without a Top Ten. He's made the cut each of three trips to Ridgewood and wouldn't be surprised to see him play well this week.

6).Canada's Taylor and the Georgia's English finished well at Greensboro and were the only two pros to jump into the Top 125 - Martin Piller and Van Aswegen slipped out. Seamus Power was one lucky lad, sliding from 123rd to 125th and surviving by the skin of his teeth. He'll never get a better chance than next season to prove whether he truly belongs.

7).The perennially unlucky guy struck again, Matt Jones falling from 146th to 151st, losing the all-important "conditional" status.
During his career the sweet-swinging, fast playing, usually smiling Aussie has ended the season 126th twice, 127th, 151st and 152nd. Jones plays his final rounds at least half a stroke worse than his 1st, 2nd or 3rd, but I bet a stat on his final, say, half dozen holes would show just how bad his putting is under pressure. Absolutely brutal when in contention in Dallas for instance.

8).So Jones will be contesting the first round of the web.com Finals, in Ohio along with such old lags as Mahan, Sang Moon Bae, Lingmerth (whose double-dipping seems to have set his career in reverse), Glover, Streb, Every, Badds, Chad Campbell, etc, etc.
It's beneath Lowry & McDowell to lower themselves to the web.com, but some European Tourists are playing including Frittelli, Paisley & Suri.

9).Darren Clarke embarks on his Champions Tour career this week and so does Chris DiMarco who is probably one of a relatively few golfers to lose Play-Offs in two Majors without ever winning one. Suppose Kenny Perry is another.
Assuming these guys still have endorsement contracts, they can freewheel for at least a couple of years and build a lucrative second career. Or they can p1ss away the opportunity. Hope DC, at least, takes advantage.

10).Who do you fancy at Ridgewood? The three recent winners here (Singh, Kuchar, Mahan) were all first and foremost fairways-and-greens types who had decent weeks with the putter.
Kevin Streelman is the man with local history here and has finished 3rd & 4th in previous efforts. And Jason Day has runnered up and finished 5th. Others in the field who have made the cut all three times they've played here include Casey (last chance at the Ryder Cup saloon?) Cink, Hoffman, Bubba, Ryan Palmer and Kevin Na.
Can't wait to see how the bomber generation fare this week, and can't wait to see how beautiful Ridgewood handles the assault.

Big Changes may be on the way for the FEX Playoffs.

Sounds like a cluster to me

https://golfweek.com/2018/08/27/sources-major-changes-coming-to-fedex-cup/

I quite like the idea of it, would bring a bit more interest. Means it’s all one prize rather than a tour championship event winner and a Fed Ex winner. The fact we are talking about strokes rather than points (dollars) makes it at least seem more about sport than cash. Why they feel the need to increase the money is beyond me, not like the lack of funds will put anyone off playing.

I like the fact the the Fed-Ex cup winner and Tour Championship winner were different last year as I felt it was becoming win the Tour Championship - win the Fed-Ex cup which rewards end of season form rather than consistency.

For me Thomas was a more deserving Fed-Ex cup winner

They’ll probably throw the purse for the TC onto the FEC and make it look like an increased FEC purse.

Diggers wrote:I couldn’t give a toss if JT, Spieth or DJ become $10million richer.

Bit of a pointless comment on a thread about the Fedex play offs?

raycastleunited wrote:

Diggers wrote:I couldn’t give a toss if JT, Spieth or DJ become $10million richer.

Bit of a pointless comment on a thread about the Fedex play offs?

Why?

Diggers wrote:

raycastleunited wrote:

Diggers wrote:I couldn’t give a toss if JT, Spieth or DJ become $10million richer.

Bit of a pointless comment on a thread about the Fedex play offs?

Why?

If you're not interested, why post? I've yet to contribute to the wrestling forum for that reason.

I’ve said that I think the money is too much and that the whole process needs livening up. I’ve also commented positively on the proposed changes, therefore actually helping a thread keep going on what is hardly a buzzing forum. Don’t really see how that’s a bad thing, but each to their own.

Ray

Not that he needs my help but in Diggers defence it is relevant that a fan finds a golf tournament irrelevant.  It could be the case that if enough fans felt this way the event isn't really played in the most interesting format.

The more people that feel engaged in an event the more fun it is for others to follow.  It is almost like a positive feedback loop when other people are also hyped by the same thing you are. Isn't this part of the Tiger effect?  You feel justified in buying into the hype because everyone else is.

I get the idea of wanting to make the Wyndham more relevant, but I don’t think fans will get fired up over it.

Compelling finishes with big names, majors, WGCs, and exciting ‘grand finale events’ like the TC is what get the juices going. And maybe Tiger.

After the regular season ends you crown the money leader with whatever title you want. Top 125 play a one event knock out, top 75 through to final two events. Anyone that doesn't play or is outside the top 75 after 4 rounds gets knocked out.

Then 2 events for 75 with no cut and culmulative scores each round.

These play offs need to be made more interesting, I'm glad they are trying something. Especially with major season ending in july, so basically little to keep a golf fan interested.

Surprised no one has highlighted the elephant in the room here, that the Tour Championship is dull primarily because it has so few players. The WGCs get criticised, and rightly so, for being limited field celebrations of the rich getting richer. But they normally have fields of around 70 compared to 30 for the TC. Even the Dubai finale manages 60. When you take into account that some will be turning up primarily for the pay day, and plenty more will mentally check out after a poor first round, you end up with a tournament with many fewer levels of interest than a full field event.
I can get fully on board with the playoffs being cut down to three events, if they go 125/100/70 and that’s it.

Also, it doesn't help the TC that East Lake is boooring as hell.

Boring course plays a big part.

But whittling it down to top 40 isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Most fans want to see the top players facing off against each other for the biggest prizes. Little interest in the journeymen.

The elimination process is designed to capture the best players - like the Champions league they don't want to lose a box office player in the final stages.

Thanks for posting the info on the proposed changes GPB.  I had wondered what they were.


Also I did not realise that people thought it was an issue that the Tour champ could differ from the Fedex cup winner?  


If we are worried about players checking out in the TC how is giving some players a ten shot deficit going to help that?

McLaren wrote:If we are worried about players checking out in the TC how is giving some players a ten shot deficit going to help that?

At least you'll know that winning the tournament (with up to 10 shots) will give you the FEC. With the current system it wouldn't matter if you won the TC with 1 or 20 shots - you still wouldn't be sure to win the FEC (unless you are in the top 5 going into the TC).

Each year I see media and golf fans complaining that the TC winner should automatically be the FEDEX Champ

I have no issue that it could be different players. The FEX is a 11 month competition, not a one week tournament.

Agree GPB. Interesting to see if they’ll keep showing all those nauseating FEX projections througout the year when it now becomes even more irrelevant. But I guess FedEx still wants some bang for their bucks.

I bet the same media and fans were complaining at the injustice when Langer wasn’t the Charles Schwab champion last year GPB. You can’t please some people.

I think the FedEx is somewhat a victim of its own cleverness. I don’t remember there being the same fuss pre-2007 that the money winner may not be the guy who won the TC. And no one seems to mind that guys like Matty Fitz can win the Dubai tournament and still only just be top ten in the Race standings, which Rory can basically have sown up weeks ago.

The whole playoffs idea is a delicate balancing act, at best. I’m still not entirely convinced that it’s ever possible to satisfy both sides of the debate, rewarding both the TC winner and the season’s best player to the extent required to please everyone.

Surely that’s largely because people deep down don’t care who the money winner, or indeed tour championship winner is. The rankings and the majors tell you who the best players are. I get it keeps the season going, it’s just all a bit meh really.

Diggers wrote:Surely that’s largely because people deep down don’t care who the money winner, or indeed tour championship winner is. The rankings and the majors tell you who the best players are. I get it keeps the season going, it’s just all a bit meh really.

Its got you posting about Golf in mid August, which was a dead period in golf until the FEX playoffs.

The title of Tour Championship, makes it sound like a final. If you want to run a fedex cup peaking with a championship at the end, yous should make that championship all important.

Just whittle it down over the season, and all play for the title at the end.

GPB wrote:

Diggers wrote:Surely that’s largely because people deep down don’t care who the money winner, or indeed tour championship winner is. The rankings and the majors tell you who the best players are. I get it keeps the season going, it’s just all a bit meh really.

Its got you posting about Golf in mid August, which was a dead period in golf until the FEX playoffs.

I think 6 weeks holiday and too much time be on my hands is what got me commenting. I don’t think I will watch too much of it but you never know.