Well. A certain canine apparently has some strong feelings regarding the current goings on, on tour. That, and squirrels. But we’ve always known how he feels about squirrels.
He got a lot of things right, but a few things….uh. Well, since he reads this, and I would not appreciate having any of my shoes chewed up, let’s just say some things could use a little further explanation.
The first FedEx Cup was last year. As you might expect, Tiger won. And as with anything new like this, it had a few kinks, and things have been changed a little for this years cup.
The players accumulate points from the Mercedes-Benz Championship at the beginning of January through the Wyndham Championship in mid-August. The top 144 players then continue on through ‘the playoffs’, which are actually just the last 4 tournaments of the season. This year at the start of the playoffs the points will be reset. The top player will be set to 100,000 points, 2nd ranked to 99,500, 3rd ranked to 99,250, and so on. For a full explanation of the point structure and money distribution see here. Now there are all kinds of discussions on how this works, and if it means players have to play in more or less tournaments, if it gives more players a chance to make it, if the big guys can sit out a few, the fact that it is possible to win the cup without winning a tournament….and on and on. If you are a college football fan, it has become like discussing the BCS. The permutations are endless and make for a lot of good sports talk radio. For most of us the up shot is, players get points through the season, and the points are reset for the playoffs. The player with the most points at the end of the playoffs wins the FedEx Cup.
And lots of money. The other change this year is that not all the money is put into the players retirement fund. See, one of those afore mentioned geniuses figured out that if Tiger won the cup 7 times ( which is entirely within the realm of possibility, considering that, even though he hasn’t played since July, he still had the most points going into the play offs ) he would have a retirement fund, which is tax deferred, of over $1 Billion. And the genius figured that the Federal Government might take a dim view of that, and start looking into things, and maybe passing laws. So this year the winner gets a $9 million dollar check, and $1 million goes into the retirement fund. Any player who finishes out of the top 10 after the playoff has all their winnings put into the retirement account. So if you want to make any cash off of this, you need to finish in the top 10.
Now, about the play off. It consists of 4 tournaments. The top 144 players play in the first one. Points are added to their total based on where they finish. Then a cut is made and only the top 120 players move onto the second tournament. After the second tournament another cut is made and only the top 70 move on to the third tournament. And only the top 30 play in the last tournament. Whoever has the most points after that is the winner. Now. You don’t have to do much math to figure out that if you are say, in the top 10 in points, and you win the first tournament, you get enough points that you have more than enough points to keep you in the top 70 and you don’t really need to play in the next two tournaments. You could play in the last one, finish 3rd, and still end up with the most points and win the cup. But if the top players choose to sit out one or two of the last tournaments, that’s not good for business. So this year they tightened the point spread. Meaning the difference between the points for winning, and coming in second etc., has been greatly reduced. This is supposed to help keep more players in the running and make it much harder for the top players to skip a tournament and still stay on top.
At this point two of the play off tournaments have been played: The Barclays and The Deutsche Bank Championship. Vijay Singh won both of them and currently has the most points. Sergio is in second place and Mike Weir is in third. If you care about the complete current standings, click here. Next up is the BMW Championship then The Tour Championship. Both The Barclays and The Tour Championship have long histories outside of being part of the playoff. The Deutsche Bank was started in 2003 and the BMW is the reincarnated Western Open. The Western itself was the third oldest tournament on the tour before becoming the BMW and part of the playoff. The Tour Championship has traditionally marked the end of the season. So it became the final playoff event, finishing the season with the FedEx cup bang. This year is a Ryder Cup Year ( several posts up coming on that ) and there is nothing those geniuses could devise that would place the FedEx Cup ahead of the Ryder Cup for any golfer in the world. So The Tour Championship was moved back a week this year, to accommodate the Ryder Cup schedule.
And I think that clarifies the major points. This may be only the second year but endless articles have already been written on the FedEx Cup. If you want to know much, much. much more, just type FedEx Cup in Google and you will get hours of reading. If you want a quick over view here is the PGA FAQ.
I will just add that, although I am reserving judgment on this whole thing for a few years, to see if they can shake it out into something worthwhile, I do get a kick out of the playoff commercials.
And one final note: perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I CERTAINLY have, Mr. Feherty is gone from the airwaves. The CBS announcing team is done for the year, The Barclays was their last tournament. The FedEx Cup tournaments, and MOST unfortunately, The Ryder Cup itself, are broadcast by NBC. Which means Johnny Miller. Ugh.
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