It's time for a true postseason playoff
Fear of losing a big name or two is preventing the PGA Tour from doing it right
Rory McIlroy even seems willing to take on postseason elimination pressure (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
The PGA Tour has a coddling problem. Its ongoing insistence on making sure its marquee players can maximize their monetization with as little stress as possible is the biggest impediment to creating a better product.
The problem with the FedEx Cup so-called playoffs is that they aren’t playoffs at all. The PGA Tour doesn’t dare want to risk having one or two of its most marketable players get eliminated in a true playoff before it reaches Tour Championship week at East Lake. So instead of making Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy try to “survive and advance” like the Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Dodgers or Duke University are required to do in their respective postseasons, it created a system that ensures its top franchises can always make it to the finale even if they choose to skip out on postseason tournaments.
This, frankly, is a joke. And it reflects poorly on both the tour and whatever star players are too fragile to approve of a legitimate playoff than might require them to not take any weeks off — figuratively or literally. It only enhances golf’s reputation as a game with stars unwilling to let their upper-hand get dealt away.
As if the game’s top players don’t have it good enough.
If you are a top 50 player in the world on the PGA Tour, you have guaranteed access to 13 events worth a combined total of $263.5 million. Five of those events are no-cut affairs worth $100 million, in which you could finish last place every time and take home nearly $200,000 anyway for just showing up and finishing. Three more limited-field signature invitationals have small cuts and the majors/Players are still full-scale meritocracies.
The other 23 regular and opposite PGA Tour events for the rank-and-file members are worth a combined $181.9 million — basically $63.5 million less than the marquee 13 events the elite are locked into.
Golf didn’t use to be this way. Before 1999 when the World Golf Championships first came on line, three of the 45 official PGA Tour events in 1998 were no-cut affairs — the season-opening winners-only Mercedes Championship at Kapalua; the NEC World Series of Golf which ranged from 20 to 50 marquee tournament champs and money leaders during its existence as a tour event; and the season-ending Tour Championship which invited only the top 30 money leaders. The combined purse of those three events was $7.95 million — less than the $8.2 Wyndham Championship two weeks ago.
Golf was a beacon as the greatest meritocracy in professional sports. You either performed well on a weekly basis or you got nothing. It was glorious.
But now — especially since LIV Golf arrived and threatened to steal away the biggest names for filthy guaranteed contracts and regular no-cut exhibitions in which you have to work only 54 holes against the same 54 guys just 14 weeks a year — the tour has created a two-tiered schedule that caters to its stars more than ever. The last thing the tour is willing to do is challenge the stars it still has to work any harder.
Not that Scheffler and McIlroy aren’t worth every penny that they win. They are exceptional talents and deserve to be compensated as such.
But it doesn’t mean they should not have to stop fighting any harder than their fellow tour members in a so-called “postseason” in order to keep advancing to the Tour Championship. You don’t see that happen in any other major sport. And it’s honestly hard to think that even Scottie and Rory want to have anything handed to them.
The PGA Tour’s postseason series began last week with the 70-man FedEx St. Jude Championship — well, 69 men this year it turned out. The tour likes to call these “playoff” events, but that’s your first clue that they are not and never have been real playoffs. McIlroy gave himself a “bye” and wasn’t eliminated for not even showing up. If he wanted, he could have skipped this week’s BMW Championship at Caves Valley as well and still advance to the finale at East Lake and win the whole thing.
Sorry, but that’s not a playoff. It’s just a series of events rigged to protect the stars with no consequences.
The PGA Tour has been fiddling and tweaking its version of a postseason “playoff” ever since it introduced the FedEx Cup in 2007 and it’s never come close to getting it right. The public could not care less about the $100 million bonuses at stake. Fans tune into playoffs to see something as thrilling as the Stanley Cup chase or as passionate as the NCAA Tournament or as big as the Super Bowl.
Golf can never do that, but it certainly can do better than this.
“Playoffs” need consequences. It needs to create real stakes to grab the attention of both players and fans. It needs the players who advance be required to step up every week to keep chasing the title.
New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp should know a little bit about that coming to golf from the NFL. Hopefully he brings the kind of clout needed to persuade the Policy Board to accept a real playoff system for the good of everybody and not just the stars the current system protects.
And what could a real playoff look like without blowing up the tour’s long-standing traditions?
Well …