Congrats to Brandt Snedecker

[sandwedge]

This was a Fed Ex Cup race I got into. I wanted Tiger to lose. I thought Rory had a great shot. In the end I was impressed with the unique putting stroke of Brandt Snedecker and thought it quite appropriate that he sealed it with a chip in on 17 (something his boyhood idol Tom Watson did quite well). Great for the game of golf that we have a number of men that can win it all - not quite Jack, Gary, Lee or Tom, Johnny and Tom Weiskopf but I think we are getting back to those days of interesting golf tournaments again.

[SteveHorn]

I'm not a fan of the way the Fed Ex Cup is deterimined at this time. Basicly whoever wins the Tour Championship tournament is more then likely going to win the cup. You can have a lousy season going into September then play just good enough to advance into the top 30, get hot 1 week the final tourny and crowned Champion of the season. I think the PGA is on the right track but it needs reworked some before I think much of there so called playoffs.

[sandwedge]

Steve,

Those are all fair points in regards to the Fed Ex Cup format. At least it is not confusing anymore I guess my main interest was in seeing great golf being played - more than one guy has the tools to dominate on tour now instead of just one.

Speaking to your points, I think Rory was quite disappointed that he did not win the Cup after winning two of the four tournaments down the stretch. His words, "I want to stay positive" when asked about it gave that away I thought. If you are a football fan than I guess you could say that Rory must have felt like Liverpool did when Van Persie got to take the penalty kick to seal it. They had played a hard fought match and a lousy call on a foul on Valencia in the box took the shine of that away. No one likes to lose because of a bad call - this year's Fed Ex Cup certainly seemed to not award a winner but create one because of a bad call on format. Time to examine the rules again?!

[BrianZ111]

Brandt Snedeker did play well through the whole playoffs but not as good as Rory did. What doesn't make any sense to me is Rory didn't just lose, he finished a full 1200 points behind.

I heard what I thought was a great idea for it, that is to just keep a running total of the players strokes over the course of the 4 events. I'm not sure who would have won then but it would be way less confusing and still make all 4 events count. Only problem I can think of is what to do about players who skip one of the events. Maybe everyone could drop their worst event of the first three, then the players who don't play an event would be able to drop the one they didn't play.

[sandwedge]

Keeping a aggregate score sounds like a great idea - certainly would be more fair to all concerned. As to what to do about players who skip - make them ineligible. Who ever heard of a baseball player missing the 5th game of the Series for any other reason but an emergency? How about if a guy said he wanted to take the Quaterfinals of the World Cup off? If I'm paying a guy 10 million dollars to compete, I want to see him compete - can't imagine the sponsors can be too happy. Maybe that sounds harsh but after all - this is the life these guys chose so take what comes with it, all of it, be responsible and give the fans a show.

Nicklaus started the whole 15 to 20 tournaments a year thing - understand why he did it too - but seriously, he was not competing for the prize money and endorsements that these guys are. If a guy's family is really important to him, he won't chose a career that will force him to juggle so much to keep it intact - most of these guys are smart enough to chose another way to make a living - but maybe that is the point - they don't want to make a living, they want it all. Being a professional athlete takes 100% devotion these days and being a family man has always taken 100% - seems like a man has to choose which he wants to be. Sorry, as a family guy I say family first and golf second - good as recreation but not something I am going to commit that many hours to - just not the priority and even these guys have got to have that figured out by now.

[BrianZ111]

Problem is it is sandwiched between two bigger events on the schedule, the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup. If I had to decide on an event to skip it would be the playoffs, not one of the other two.

[bryce]

I agree with Brian about the playoffs being between the PGA and the Ryder/Presidents Cup. I think next year the fall season of golf, after the playoffs, will actually count as the beginning of the season for 2014, and Fedex points will be awarded for those events. It's still very much a work in progress, but as mentioned earlier, Bill Haas with no wins should not have been the Fedex champion last year.

Doron

[SteveHorn]

Doron1 Your right, Bill Hass won the last tournament the previous season so he's the Fed Ex Champion? There is to much emphasis on the last 4 tournaments and exspeically The Tour Championship. You could have a great season, say won 3 tournaments total and 2 of them Majors and 10 top tens and your chances of winning The Fed Ex Cup are only slightly better then someone who just barely slipped into the field of 32 with no wins.

[sandwedge]

It definitely seems like the weighting of points is still messed up. They reset the points at the time of the Tour Championship to attempt to make it more interesting but it really does seem to make it unfair if you played extremely well up to that point in the season. I guess the Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1987? when they had like a .500 record - so it is not unprecedented in other sports for a lesser quantity to take top spot.

I think they should scrap the playoffs altogether actually - stop trying to be like NASCAR - and just weight the points for each tournament in the season and award the trophy and prize money based on that. Sure it might not sell TV ratings but it would require no explanation and no one would complain about the unfairness of it all.

Maybe if you wanted to have a playoff do it Match Play style at the end - so Rory would play Watney and Tiger would play Snedecker and then the winners square off for the whole thing.