PGA Tour Playoffs Update
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by Wrmjr
For the first time in 2007, the PGA Tour has a season playoff competition called the FedEx Cup. It isn't clear that the casual fan is paying that much attention. No matter who wins the inaugural Cup, can anyone really say that Tiger Woods hasn't had the best season of any golfer this year? Woods sat out the first tournament of the playoff series this week and fell all the way from 1st to ... 4th! What kind of playoff is it when you can sit out one of the tournaments and still have a chance to win it all?
The truth of the matter is that apart from the enormous payoff ($10 million to the winner of the FedEx Cup, though apparently payed not in cash but as an annuity), the true interest in the playoff series isn't at the top, but at the various cut-offs. The first tournament, The Barclays, included the top 144 points scorers from the PGA season. In the next tournament, the Deutsche Bank Championship, only the top 120 can play. After that it gets cut progressively to 70 at the BMW Championship and finally to the top 30 in The Tour Championship. Those top 30 players all get exemptions in 2008. That doesn't mean anything to Tiger or Phil Mickelson who can play in any tournament they want, if not with an exemption, then by invitation since any tournament would love to have them. For some of the others in contention, however, a year's exemption can be extremely important for them.
Again, to see how the cuts affect players, it isn't necessarily the top players to whom we need to look. Steve Stricker won The Barclays and is now in first place overall in the FedEx Cup standings. But two players were able to move into the top 120 and thus extend their seasons. Rich Beem made the biggest jump from #134 to #113 due to his 7th place finish in The Barclays. Doug LaBelle II finished in a tie for 41st, but that was enough to move him up one slot from #121 to #120 and earn an invitation to the Deutsche Bank Championship. Steve Allen and Matthew Coggin both missed the cut at The Barclays and fell out of the top #120.
As the final qualifier for the Deutsche Bank Championship, Doug LaBelle will likely need to win or finish 2nd to make it to the BMW Championship. Players of interest currently hovering around the 70th rank cutoff include Rocco Mediate (65th), Steve Flesch (70th) and Fred Funk (75th). The current top 5 in the standings are:
- Steve Stricker
- K.J. Choi
- Rory Sabbatini
- Tiger Woods
- Phil Mickelson
It isn't clear to me that the playoff series as it is currently structured is doing what the PGA (or FedEx) wanted it to do. With players like Woods, Jose Maria Olazabal and Bernhard Langer passing on the first tournament, fan interest couldn't have been very high. Certainly a final pairing of Sticker and Choi wasn't going to make many people shuffle their Sunday plans to watch the tournament, though Choi is one of the most underrated players on tour and Stricker made an incredible run over the last 5 holes to claim the win. Perhaps the big names will play the remaining tournaments, but as it stands, I think the FedEx Cup will need some tinkering before next year.
