Rory takes forecasted playoff 'bye'
Skipping Memphis, as planned, won't diminish title quest; Playoff field is set
Rory McIlroy will sit out the August heat in Memphis (Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
The first 2025 FedEx Cup playoff event is upon us with this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship. Scottie Scheffler is the PGA Tour’s regular season champion and has been rewarded with a cumulative $18 million in bonus money for finishing atop the standings. Rory McIlroy was second and pocketed $10 million.
Ah, but the money stuff is not to be talked about anymore in the new era of the FedEx Cup playoffs, to be contested for the 19th time under yet another iteration.
Oh, and Rory McIlroy won’t be in Memphis, Tenn., this week.
The Masters champion, who won three times on the PGA Tour this year, is not in the the now 69-player field at TPC Southwind — no alternates — that was set at the conclusion of Sunday’s Wyndham Championship.
There’s been considerable angst in the social media world in the aftermath of this disclosure, suggesting this is some sort of travesty — especially when compared to other sports. That’s conveniently forgetting, of course, that other sports have postseason byes.
There is no such thing for the PGA Tour — which probably shouldn’t be calling its three-week closing swing “playoffs” anyway — but the format does allow for someone secure in his position to skip.
That is exactly what McIlroy is doing. And it really shouldn’t be a surprise. Either people have short memories or they don’t pay attention.
Asked about his schedule following the 2024 Tour Championship at East Lake, McIlroy noted that he was set to play 27 times in 2024 including a heavy load of post-PGA Tour events on the DP World Tour. “I’m usually sort of like a 22 sort of person,” McIlroy said. “But again, that was when I was sort of in my 20s and didn’t have the responsibilities that I do now. I’m going to try to cut it back to like 18 or 20 a year going forward.”
Later in the year, to The Telegraph’s James Corrigan, McIlroy said: “There’s a few tournaments that I played this year that I don’t usually play and that I might not play next year. I played the Cognizant in Palm Beach Gardens, (the Valero Texas Open in) San Antonio, and (the RBC Heritage at) Hilton Head. And I’ll probably not play the first playoff event in Memphis. I mean, I finished basically dead last there this year and only moved down one spot in the playoff standings.”
McIlroy, in fact, did skip all those tournaments as well as the season-opening Sentry at Kapalua. He did add the Houston Open to his schedule and returned to both New Orleans to defend his winning partnership with Shane Lowry and the RBC Canadian Open.
McIlroy caught some grief for skipping three signature events — the Sentry, RBC Heritage and Memorial — but the rules allow it and McIlroy supported other places that needed his presence, too.
McIlroy also has a busy fall schedule. There’s a constant whining that players need to play a more global schedule and following the Tour Championship, McIlroy plans to play the DP World Tour’s Irish Open, BMW PGA Championship, the Ryder Cup, the India Championship as well as the season-ending DPWT events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. He’s also scheduled to play the Australian Open.
With the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship to come on the PGA Tour schedule along with those seven events and the Dubai tournament he played in January, he’s going to run his total up to 24 events in 2025.
And with 3,444 points FedEx points, McIlroy faces the possibility of dropping a few spots this week, as the playoff events offer four times the points (2,000 to the winner). Someone as far down as 16th position could pass him with a win next week.
Still, he’ll easily qualify for the Tour Championship, which no longer has a staggered starting-strokes format based on points standing and allows all 30 starters an equal chance at winning the FedEx Cup title at East Lake. Is that a good change? Maybe. It’s possible that the tour is going to make more changes to the FedEx Cup format in time for next year, calling 2025 a bridge year.
The bottom line is that McIlroy had very clearly outlined this development a year ago and stuck to his plan. And he had no idea that the format of the FedEx Cup was going to change when he first said it.
For those concerned that McIlroy might reduce his schedule drastically on the PGA Tour and not play the 15 required events — which is allowed for someone who is a lifetime member with 20 or more wins — McIlroy (who has 29 PGA Tour victories) can’t invoke that provision since he plays by the tour’s “home tour” rule.
As a European, he is allowed to get unlimited releases via the PGA Tour to compete on the DP World Tour at events played in Europe and the Middle East. In exchange, he is required to play a minimum of 15 events on the PGA Tour, which includes the four majors and the Ryder Cup. That stipulation is the tradeoff for not needing permission to play whatever he wants on his home tour.
In other words, the minimum is easily attainable.
So McIlroy won’t be in Memphis this week. He beat only one player (Max Homa) there last year. Clearly he isn’t a fan of the TPC course. And perhaps the idea of playing this time of year in such heat-exhausting place should be re-examined with all manner of other things the PGA Tour has going on.
McIlroy missing the playoff opener isn’t ideal, but it’s hardly a calamity.
During the inaugural PGA Tour playoffs in 2007, Tiger Woods skipped the first event (The Barclays) when there were four. He went on to finish T2, Win, Win. The PGA Tour and the FedEx Cup survived.
Cameron Young finals gets to experience holding a trophy (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
Young, finally, wins on ‘home’ turf at Wyndham
Cameron Young built a lead he couldn’t lose, turning a five-shot advantage into a six-shot victory in the Wyndham Championship in the final regular-season event of his fourth full season on the PGA Tour.
The maiden victory for the former Wake Forest golfer in his collegiate backyard at Greensboro’s Sedgefield Country Club came in his 94th PGA Tour start. As a rookie in 2021-22, Young finished runner-up five times including the Open Championship at St. Andrews. He had seven career runner-ups, 12 top-5s and 22 top-10s before finally notching his first win in a walkover.
“Where do I go?” Young said on camera after his final par putt dropped to finish 22-under and six shots ahead of Mac Meissner in the trophy hunt. “I’ve never done this before.”
It took longer than expected, but the timely victory throws Young’s name into the ring for Ryder Cup consideration heading into the FedEx Cup playoffs.
“It feels like a long time coming. I felt like for the first year and a half that I was out here I had a chance to win every third week ... They’ve been a bit more few and far between, so to have a chance like this today, I was not going to let it get away from me and I’m thankful that I didn’t.
“This morning I was a little bit more nervous than I expected, but kind of just did my usual stuff. I really, I was a little bit nervous starting out and then by the time I made the second or third birdie, I was just ready to get it done.
“It’s not like a burden that I hadn’t won, it’s just something that I hadn’t done and I’d like to. At times it hurts to have played some really good golf and not had that happen, but in all those cases there were really no times that I had it in my hands and lost. So it’s different I think than having a burden. It wasn’t really like that. It was more just, you know, when is it going to be my time here because it just felt like a lot of those tournaments weren’t.”
Young is the fourth Wake Forest golfer to win in Greensboro, joining Webb Simpson, Scott Hoch and Lanny Wadkins. While he only played Sedgefield a couple of times while he was in college in Winston-Salem, Young felt the support of the Triad fans as a Deac alum.
“There’s a couple places a year where I feel like I get some additional support and this is probably the biggest one,” Young said. “So anytime we get up in the Northeast I have kind of the New York crowd, but this week to have the Wake crowd out there was a lot of fun. It’s a place I really enjoy. I love this part of the country in North Carolina. Yeah, nice to have some extra support out there.”
Now the question is whether he can do enough in the playoffs to get the chance to play in front of his home-state New York crowds at Bethpage in the Ryder Cup.
“I think that that location is, first of all, one of my favorite golf courses in the world,” he said. “I have a lot of good memories there playing the New York State Open and I’m sure a New York crowd would be I at least hope on my side to some extent. So yeah, that’s been a goal this whole year. I’m trying to just look at that to just take all the small stuff that happens day to day as it comes with — in the back of my mind trying to picture myself on that team. Obviously I’d love to make it. It hurt pretty bad to miss it a couple years ago. I was ninth on the points list and didn’t get picked, so I was a bit frustrated with that. Set out the year to give our captain no choice, and I don’t know if I’m in a position to do that or not, but it would take some really good golf between now and then.”
With a berth in the playoffs at stake for the top 70 in the FedEx Cup points after the Wyndham Championship, only Chris Kirk played his way in from outside and pushed Ben An out.
Kirk started the tournament at No. 73 but finished tied for fifth at Sedgefield to move up to 61st and into the field at this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind. Only An fell out from 69th to 74th after missing the cut.
“I was significantly more nervous today than I would have been in that same situation next-to-last group,” said Kirk. “Was a lot more nervous than I normally would have been. It’s kind of … I knew I was in great position to have a good week and move on to next week, but there’s the pressure of that and then also trying to not try to think forward too much but try to get yourself in position to possibly make it to the BMW. Didn’t quite get as many points as I would have liked, but overall very happy with my game.”
Davis Thompson three-putted his last hole to finish T11 in Greensboro, but it wasn’t quite enough as he climbed from 78th to 71st, with Matti Schmid hanging onto his 70th spot with a T31 showing at the Wyndham by making birdie on the last three holes.
“I mean, sucks but is what it is,” said Thompson. “Just got to move on and get ready for the fall. … Putted terrible today. Made that long putt on 15, that’s about it. It’s really disappointing. Sucks ending regular season this way.”
Said Schmid: “I saw on 15 that I was on 72nd place, which I thought all right, this is not too far away. And then I made three birdies so probably I should look at it more often. … I think I’ve been on a few bubbles now. Well, it’s a grind. Ideally you want to be way outside of that, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
Gary Woodland also came up short, reaching just No. 72 after a T23 finish, while Nicolai Højgaard’s bubble burst with a T55 effort that dropped him from 71st to 73rd.
“It stinks to not move on, but I’m excited for some rest, I need it,” said Woodland, who will serve as a U.S. Ryder Cup assistant captain at Bethpage Black. “Rest up, spend some quality time with the family, try to get a little healthier and then get ready for the Ryder Cup now. It was a good year in a lot of ways, but I have a long way to go in a lot of ways. The best part’s my game’s in a really good spot and I’m happy with that.”