Another PGA Tour season is in the books and once again the format of the FedEx Cup finale has been questioned.
Scottie Scheffler called the format “silly” last month, where the leader begins the 72-hole Tour Championship at 10-under-par with a two-stroke lead over the second-placed golfer.
Scheffler pointed out that Will Zalatoris finished 30th in the FedEx Cup in 2022 after withdrawing before the Tour Championship, where he would have started in 3rd-place and just three back of the lead.
The format was changed to the new staggered start in 2019 to try and improve the entertainment value of the final event and ensure that there was just one winner.
The previous format, where just the top-five in the standings had a chance of lifting the FedEx Cup, had been criticised before and the new one has also been divisive.
Is it time to change it again? Three of our writers discuss…
The climax of the PGA Tour season should be a must-watch, but in my opinion the current format actually takes away from what should be a brilliant tournament.
The Tour Championship at East Lake is a prestigious event in its own right, and I feel that the PGA Tour should go back to how it used to be where we could have separate winners of the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup.
It’s what the DP World Tour, LPGA Tour and LIV Golf do.
Collin Morikawa won the tournament according his Official World Golf Ranking page yet his PGA Tour page makes no mention of it. It’s the complete reverse for Scottie Scheffler who started at 10-under-par.
Morikawa called it a “fake leaderboard” and the whole thing is slightly confusing when you consider that golfers are measured on how many wins they accrue in their careers. Who won the 2024 Tour Championship, Scheffler or Morikawa? You can make a case for each.
On that same point, an example could be if Tommy Fleetwood won the ‘OWGR’ tournament, so he had the lowest score for four days but didn’t win the FedEx Cup, would that have counted as his first ever PGA Tour victory? Not according to the records, although the OWGR would have awarded him the points as he’d have finished 1st in a 72-hole PGA Tour event. It’s just confusing.
The upcoming LIV Golf individual finale is very fair and easy to understand. It’s Niemann vs Rahm because they both are far out at the top of the standings.
In fairness, the current format does its job of rewarding the #1 going into the week as Scheffler did not shoot the lowest score but he still walked away with the FedEx Cup. I’m just not sure that this is the best way to go about it.
Jonny Leighfield
At the very least, the FedEx Cup Playoffs need a re-think.
The current set-up is supposed to generate greater entertainment and excitement right up until the last putt, but it failed to do that this year – and it also just seems competitively unfair.
Scottie Scheffler was the best player on the PGA Tour by a country mile this season, yet – one slight tweak of the shoulder and he finishes 30th. Why is that even a possibility?
Yes, he was given a two-shot headstart for his regular-season play, but everyone in golf knows a two-shot swing can take place in the blink of an eye. If they are to stick with the Starting Strokes system, could the regular-season points be translated into Starting Strokes so that Scheffler was given the headstart he deserved?
Then again, if that was implemented and Scheffler produced another overwhelmingly dominant campaign, the entertainment value for fans in August dives off a cliff.
I understand that FedEx have paid a lot of money to sponsor the season, so they’re going to want full value, but it does feel like the best option would be a regular league table that just finishes in August, without three events with ridiculously-inflated points offerings at the end.
Some years will be more interesting than others, absolutely, but that’s why sport is so fundamentally compelling – because of its unpredictability and lack of preordained result.
Most other pro golf tours operate in a simple linear format, but it seems as though the PGA Tour has ultimately made a decision to excessively promote entertainment over the fundamentals of elite-level sport – skill, mental fortitude, and discipline.
There needs to be a balance, and the scales have tipped too far in one direction for the FedEx Cup Playoffs to be deemed a success.
A lot of players, like Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa, were unsure of the format of the playoffs and, in all honesty, I completely agree with them.
I found the whole week to be lacking in drama and, when it’s a playoff, it shouldn’t be like that.
We all know that Scheffler is the best player on the planet and, to give him a head start just increases the likelihood of him winning. It’d be like giving Ronnie O’Sullivan a 100 point head start in snooker.
What’s more, without the staggered start, it would have been incredibly exciting and, what I don’t get, is Morikawa getting the victory on the OWGR, but not on his PGA Tour record. Make it make sense…!?
It seems like the system could be in need of a change and, if you look back at the previous Tour Championships, it’s almost the case of just making sure you time your run as the points jump so severely.
Essentially, you could creep into the top 70 and, with one victory in playoff week, have a chance of coming out on top.
I think LIV Golf’s format works better, as well as how many other tours run their season points systems. They have a season-long race without playoffs and at the end of it, that’s it, there’s one winner.
We don’t have to go through the process of playoffs for entertainment purposes. I do understand what the PGA Tour is trying to do, which is engage, but in an individual sport like golf the playoff format doesn’t work in the same way as team sports and needs looking at.
