PGA Tour season finale?
FedEx Cup Super-Week?
Tour Championship?
Or how about The Championship “B” Flight of your club championship?
The first thing you need to know about this week’s end of the PGA Tour’s season is that if they had this cockamamie handicapping system at last year’s Tour Championship, Tiger Woods would have won (drum roll please…) absolutely nothing. There would have been no heart-stopping 80th tour win for El Tigre, no panademonium, no massive throngs of humanity pouring down the 18th fairway at East Lake to witness golf history.
No, there would have been none of that.
So here we are at East Lake once again and The Sheriff Of Nottingham (aka tour commish Jay Monahan) and his Sinister Band Of Henchmen have concocted a brilliant system to make sure that there aren’t two trophies passed out on Sunday to two different players. No, that’s not kosher so they basically dipped into America’s amateur handicapping system to try and insure that victory in both the FedEx Cup and Tour Championship goes to just one man.
So look at it like the Championship “B” Flight at your club or golf course. Everyone except the scratch players get shots and the scratch guys are in the Championship “A” Flight. Those sort of events only give you 80 percent of your handicap as well. So that must mean Justin Thomas is a 12-handicapper, thus he gets 10 shots.
Here’s the difference. Instead of getting strokes on certain holes, J.T. just starts at 10-under par for the tournament. If he shoots four-under on Thursday at East Lake, he’s 14-under after the first 18 holes.
We have a better idea. Spread the 10 shots over the first two rounds, five shots each round and give him strokes on the five toughest holes. Make him “earn” those birdies. Same with everyone else. Patrick Cantlay gets shots on the four toughest holes the first two rounds, and so on and so forth.
To be totally candid, it’s just hard to fathom giving high-level professionals that sort of advantage.
Can you imagine if Alabama ends the 2019 season ranked N0. 1 and Clemson finishes ranked No. 2 and in the championship game, Alabama starts out with the scoreboard reading: Alabama 3, Clemson 0?
So much for this season-ending handicap advantage and we’re stuck with it, so let’s take a quick look at who we think will win come Sunday.
Brooks Koepka: Brooksie can make up three shots on anyone over four rounds. Had a great final nine holes to finish the BMW after what was otherwise a very ho-hum performance. He has a way to turning it on when the stakes are high and you’d think $15 million gets his attention, even though this isn’t a major.
Pat Cantlay: Anyone else think this kid has the demeanor of an Old West young gunslinger? Kid’s got game and he’s really got it going. He can make up a couple of shots pretty easy.
Justin Thomas: J.T.’s in the cat-bird seat. Ten shots seems like too many but three wouldn’t have been enough last Sunday at Medinah.
Jon Rahm: He’s been sniffing a big win. A T-5 last week shows his game is where it needs to be to win it all this week.
Tony Finau: Something about Tony, he plays just good enough to finish high but not win.
Rory McIlroy: Knows how it feels to win it all but needs to keep it in the fairway and hit wedges that stop within 10 feet, not 25 feet.
Who else?
Too many skilled players getting too many strokes.
For once, we can say “it’s rigged” and that’s hard to argue.
6 Comments
williambaker
Agree it’s a bad idea. My suggestion – no handicaps. 32 guys get in based on Fed Ex points. Play match play for 2 rounds (the seeding should give players with the highest points at least a theoretical advantage), reducing field to 8. Those 8 play 2 rounds to determine winner of Tourney and FedEx. If 8 aren’t enough, could double field to 64 to start, finish with 16 playing last 2 days.
Tom Edrington
Bill, pretty creative, the PGA Tour hates creativity!
baxter cepeda
I do prefer Toms idea of giving the strokes on the hardest holes over starting The leader at -10 under, which is hard to believe is actually happening.
If anything start JT at Even Par and the bottom guys at +10 over.
But Toms Alabama analogy is perfect. No one gets an advantage in the final of a playoff because of previous success. No one. So why do it here?
Let’s also remember the first two rounds of the playoffs are still flawed by the old points system.
Also, previously 5 guys we’re even headed to east Lake; now only one player (JT) has The edge; so this is a regression in the evolution of golfs painstakingly slow quest to evolve into a playoff.
At the very least 5 guys should start even Steven at Bobby’s old course.
Golf channel needs to Please stop enabling the tour rewarding regular season work. Brooks won 3 times, one in Asia last year.
Brooks won a major but so did 3 other guys. While top 5s in other majors is great it hardly deserves to be rewarded much for the playoffs over guys whom have had their own multiple win seasons. Rory comes to mind winning the “sheriffs” jewel and all the other stuff he did this season.
There really are few seasons which says give one man a bunch of extra rewards and advantages. So just play off as much as possible. Especially at the end. It’s so simple.
Toms tiger point is also a great one.
This great event will now have one Big Elephant every single year:
someone will likely shoot lower than the champ but get no accolades; a complete 180 from what happens every other week on tour: 4 rounds, lowest score wins.
It’s like pulling teeth to get the tour to try other formats in regular Events but then they pull this at the end for all these stakes.
It’s unbelievable really.
Tom Edrington
Baxter, like I told Bill Baker in his comment: The PGA Tour hates creativity!
baxter cepeda
I’m wondering if the pga tour are a bit too creative being that The solution is so simple.
Simply Stop worrying about regular season and play off already.
For me one big solution is byes. Invite all 4 major winners, players champs, playoff events, whyndham rewards champ, and whomever else the tour wants based on whatever. They can even give special invites to increase ratings in India if they like. I don’t care.
But once it starts May the best man win!
Tom Edrington
Once again, the tour doesn’t have the mentality to be that creative…