ST. LOUIS -- The silver lining for the FedEx Cup playoffs can best be summarized by a phrase that was first heard uttered 20-odd years ago by a high school football coach in the San Fernando Valley.
It's unclear what disappointing news had just been visited upon him, or whether it related more specifically to his football team, but when it came to putting things in context, the guy hit the nail on the head.
Even though the news of the day first appeared to be a nail in the coffin.
|
|
| Vijay Singh's dominance is making a mockery of this year's playoffs. (AP) |
Which is where the new FedEx Cup points system comes in. Torn up and torn asunder after too few players were able to muster a challenge to win the $10 million last year, the pendulum has swung toward the opposite side in 2008, where upheaval is so abrupt, it's a veritable certainty more change will in the pipeline.
In fact, tour commissioner Tim Finchem all but guaranteed it this week at the BMW Championship, the third stop in the four-event FedEx Cup series, where torrential rain washed out the first round of competition on Thursday.
Faced with the real possibility that stars like Adam Scott and three-time major championship winner Padraig Harrington won't advance to next week's series finale in Atlanta, the 30-player Tour Championship, the product going forward will likely land on a middling middle ground.
Ideally, of course, Finchem would like the conversation to center on the FedEx competition, not the faulty construct. But at least they are talking, which has rarely been the case at this point in the tour season.
"I do think that the Padraig Harrington thing actually stirs up debate about this, and debate is good and healthy, and some level of controversy gets people talking about it," Finchem said this week in St. Louis. "People around the country are having a lot more discussion on talk radio this year than last year, so I don't know how you measure that, but that's good stuff. So we'll see what happens."
Plenty has happened already.
As Jim Furyk pointed out this week, the players at the bottom of the points last year complained there wasn't enough movement during the four-event series. After the points were re-cooked this spring, some stars at the top of the points list groused that the upheaval is too severe.
Some are flipping out over the flip-flop. After the morphing, the before and after are as dissimilar as a marathon and a mile race -- the season-long jaunt of 2007 has turned into a four-lap sprint in '08.
Phil Mickelson last week raised the possibility that he won't play as often in the regular season because the points are so skewed toward the four series events. So why play in regular events, Mickelson mused, clearly trying to make a point.
"It could sort of backfire," Hunter Mahan said.
The reconstituted points structure has changed the character of the Tour Championship, once a premier, 30-player event that represented a reward for the players who topped the money list. Now it has become the final lap for the sprinters who pieced together three decent FedEx series weeks.
With the FedEx series half-completed, seven players who rank in the top 30 in earnings are outside the top 30 in FedEx points, meaning they won't advance with a rally in St. Louis. The list includes stars like Harrington and Scott, Ryder Cup players Boo Weekley and J.B. Holmes, plus Sean O'Hair, D.J. Trahan and Jeff Quinney.
On the other side of the ledger, four players who were outside the top 30 in earnings have fought their way into the Tour Championship cutline via their FedEx performances: Ken Duke, Kevin Sutherland, Briny Baird and Billy Mayfair.
"It kind of defeats the purpose of having the Tour Championship, because the Tour Championship was the end of the year thing, and I've talked to a few guys, and it means a lot to be in there, it really does," Mahan said. "You've worked hard all year long and you're recognized as one of the top 30 players on the PGA Tour that year, and that's saying something."
|
|
| The opening round will now be Friday, with 36 holes scheduled for Saturday. (AP) |
As one tour official put it, "We sort of did a bait-and-switch with the Masters and USGA on Atlanta."
Of course, since Vijay Singh has won the first two legs of the series to all but cement the seven-figure bonus payout, there's nothing that can, or should, be done to diminish his accomplishment. Last year, Tiger Woods did something similar, going 2-1-1 in the three FedEx events in which he played.
"It's kind of funny that we made the system that was going to provide a lot of opportunities for players in the last week, and it looks like there's going to be fewer opportunities for players," said a laughing Steve Stricker, who finished second to Woods in bonus points last year.
Mahan on Thursday tried to weigh the yin and yang of the design, and ended up carrying on a nice argument with himself.
"There's some negative in the fact that someone could get hot for a couple weeks and be in the Tour Championship, and the Tour Championship will get you into the Masters, even though you haven't really maybe played well enough to be in the Masters.
"I don't know, I think it's a little extreme. But it does give everybody a chance to win, which is pretty neat, because the prize is so big. The fact that pretty much everybody who stepped on the tee a couple weeks ago had a chance to win it, it's pretty interesting."
For all of those preaching a more moderate approach next year, there are some heretics out there, too, including a downright surprising advocate for volatility, Harrington himself.
The way Harrington, likely to win the PGA Tour player of the year award after collecting the last two majors in succession, would like to see even more penalty for those who play poorly in the four-event "playoff" series.
"I actually think I'd be more inclined if you miss the cut, go home, you're out," said Harrington, who has missed the first two FedEx cuts and has dropped 40 spots to 44th in the standings. "I've missed two cuts, I certainly should be out.
"This is the playoffs. It's four tournaments. It should be judged on the merits of those four tournaments with a little bit of bias (in player seeding) to the start of the year. So I like the volatility. I think there could be more volatility if you ask me in the future."
That sentiment largely mirrors the public feedback received last year, Finchem said.
"They wanted it to feel more like a playoff, more like a do-or-die situation, and we just moved the needle a little bit in that regard, and so there is more volatility," Finchem said. "That means on the upside and the downside.
"I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. It's something to look at."
Finchem also pointed out that even though Singh would, in essence, have to contract food poisoning not to win, there are still a tiny handful of scenarios in which Mike Weir or Sergio Garcia could win the bonus. Like if one of them won the two remaining events as Singh had lackluster weeks.
"Now, should he have it wrapped up after two wins? No, but he doesn't have it wrapped up," Finchem said. "We'll still look at it. We'll still look at it and say, 'Let's make sure we've done the right thing here.'"
Finchem related a conversation he had with Woods three or four years ago when the FedEx plan was in its infancy.
"He listened and said, 'So let me understand, I could win nine times and I've only got a little bit of an edge on the next guy going into the playoffs?'" Finchem said. "I said, 'Yeah, but the Yankees could win 120 times and they don't have any edge; they're starting over. It's the playoffs.'"
"Tiger said, 'Let's bring it on.' So it just depends on how you define what a playoff is and how much is at stake. We'll revisit it."
