Update: Reset Cup As A Stroke Play

Believe it or not, Doug Ferguson has filed yet another rave review for the FedExCup and it includes a nice mention of all the fawning (well, rear-end-kissing) texts Tim Finchem received for the BMW Championship leaderboard (any follow-up texts today congratulating him on a 2.5 rating that would indeed edge out a poker championship on ESPN).

Thankfully, Randall Mell points out this year's ridiculous oddity and the overall awkward nature of the cup: Louis Oosthuizen can finish second this week and win the Reset Cup without winning any playoff tournaments.

Now, in an alternate universe where the bar is a bit higher than merely celebrating a gathering of stars no matter how silly the competition, we look for ways to actually make this competition appealing to a wider audience.

Gary Van Sickle's suggestion for an aggregate FedExCup continues to appeal despite one (not deadly) flaw: season-long points don't mean much besides getting you in the playoffs. However, the issue of trying to reward good play during the regular season could be remedied and that's not important right now. (It's easy to visualize a stroke-based system that rewards the top players and penalizes the bottom feeders.)

Seeing as how we are through three playoff stages with only the Tour Championship at East Lake next week, Jim McCabe updates us on the leaderboard for those who have played all three playoff events (Dufner and Garcia therefore are DQ'd).

Here are the top 10 (McCabe lists more and has more plus some other good playoff notes worth checking out):

    •    Rory McIlroy, 41 under
    •    Dustin Johnson, 36 under
    •    Tiger Woods, 34 under
    •    Louis Oosthuizen, 34 under
    •    Phil Mickelson, 31 under
    •    Lee Westwood, 31 under
    •    Brandt Snedeker, 25 under
    •    Ryan Moore, 24 under
    •    Adam Scott, 24 under
    •    Nick Watney, 19 under

How would this not be a more interesting race to follow at East Lake along with the Tour Championship itself? Two tournaments going at once and every fan can understand scores to par. And as Van Sickle has proposed, perhaps a five-stroke credit for winning a playoff event to, gulp, incentivize the boys.

More important, would this be fan friendly?

When the PGA Tour's dynamic video scoreboards take a break from showing ads or telling us who the host professional is, they could easily tell us where the tournament and FedExCup stand. Right? And wouldn't the entire affair have more credibility with fans if they could actually understand what is going on? Or is the fan that low on the list of the insulated world of the PGA Tour that they simply do not care about that aspect of the Reset Cup?

Comments

[BrianS]

Phil (and most everyone else in greater amounts) starts off the TC 10 strokes behind Rory ? Wow, that should be an exciting week of golf.

[Hawkeye]

And next year, Tiger and Rory finish 1 and 2 in the season standings, but miss the cut at Liberty National and therefore are either excluded or simply see no point in playing the remaining three tournaments. Good for ratings, that.

[Bertie Wooster]

A few years back everyone had their knickers in a twist because Vijay had built up such a lead through the first three rounds of the FedEx Cup that all he had to do was show up at the TC to win the cup, thus they instituted the point reset before the final round to ensure the leader would still have to play for the win. Now everyone seems to be offended that Rory's well earned lead has been set aside and he has to play to win.

[Stiggy]

As an aside from this; i saw a commercial this morning on the Golf Channel describing the Fedex Cup as the "Ultimate Prize". Maybe Bill Haas is well on his way to being in the Hall of Fame then!!

[Hawkeye]

One other thing: The "Van Sickle system" makes it arguably even more likely that Oosthuizen wins the FedEx Cup without having won on Tour all year. All he has to do is finish second behind anyone else than Mickelson or Westwood by more than two, with McIlroy six or more shots behind, Johnson three behind, while staying ahead of Woods. That feels more likely to me than the scenario Randall Mell provides us with.

[rb]

"Oosthuizen wins the FedEx Cup "

that would send Finchy into a coma

[Robert Matre]

All FedEx Cup scenarios have flaws, fatal flaws, including Van Sickle's.

The best system in my opinion: Finish The Tour Championship on Saturday, and the four playoff winners play an 18 hole shootout for $10mil on Sunday. The fatal flaw: what happens if a player wins two of the events, or three, or all four even?

[Joey]

Personally, I'm hoping Louis wins, so they'll finally turn this last event into matchplay, which is what it should have been in the first place.

Without a points reset, we're left with a snoozer like 2008 when Vijay won just by posting a score. Any score.

[RLL]

Meet the new "playoff" tension -- same as the old "playoff" tension: how will computer algo's prevail to overpower the simplicity of a golf scorecard this year?

[Stanley Thompson]

The Fedex Cup is a joke!!

[Charlie]

@BrianS - why not take 4 million of the 10 million prize and make each tournament winner get a million dollar bonus on top of what they normally win. this would motivate guys who think they are out of the overall championship to still play to win that week.

[Del the Funk]

I see ol' 3-iron bogeyed 4 of the last 5 for a final round 78 and missed the Atlanta-30 by a shot......that boy is clutch.

[G-Man]

I think the current system - as flawed as it might be - could work if the fields were smaller. 50 for the first event, 40 for the second, 30 for the third, and 15 for the last event. It's not the playoffs if more than 75% of the people who have cards make it in to play. In all other professional sports the playoffs consist of 25% or less of the total teams in the league. Also, getting into the playoffs would be harder and would make the regular season points more important.

Also, what about a match play format? I think professional golf needs to embrace this format of play again. We only see this twice a year (WGC Accenture - which is on a terrible course - and Ryder Cup/Presidents Cup - which are some of the best events every year). Getting the drama and excitement of getting a Tiger - Rory, Tiger - Phil match in the playoffs or for the title is worth the risk of going a year or two with less interesting names at the top. If two big name stars made it to the final match, Finchem would look like a genius.

[Dave]

NHL - 16 playoff teams out of 30 total teams - 53% in the playoffs

NBA - 16 playoff teams out of 30 total teams - 53% in the playoffs

NFL - 12 playoff teams out of 32 total teams - 38% in the playoffs

MLB - 10 playoff teams out of 30 total teams - 30% in the playoffs

[7-11]

Scoreboards? Those aren't scoreboards, they're licensing fee revenue streams. Forgedaboutit, the Tour doesn't care if Tiger, Rory, DJ or Ousty know where they stand in relation to one another, they're too busy counting the ca$h. The last time the Tour cared about the fans they jacked up the Northern Trust Open ticket prices. Three thousand fans where there Sunday to see that spectacular finish. As for the fans understanding what is going on, it's designed on purpose to be confusing, even the players themselves don't understand it completely, and that's by design to.

Geoff, this is the BOONDOGGLE CUP, there, the cat is out of the bag.

Once you grasp this reality, the last seven years of tweaking by the tweakers comes clearly into focus. You can toss the rose colored glasses and save yourselves the time and effort of trying to help a format that most in Ponte Vedra don't want any help with. Caliche? Save yourselves the aggravation. Sheesh....

[Del the Funk]

Network TV hates matchplay in golf (especially so with Tiger succeeding less)...TV money drives PGA Tour golf...matchplay will never happen for the FedEx Cup, the sooner we all come to terms with this fact, the better.

The last 8 matchplay finals have produced one small win for TV, and it was only a small win because Tiger blew Cink out. Networks don't want to gamble, especially so based on all the matchplay final duds as exhibited below.

2012 (so so) Hunter Mahan -- Rory McIlroy
2011 (dud) Luke Donald -- Martin Kaymer
2010 (huge dud) Ian Poulter -- Paul Casey
2009 (huge dud) Geoff Ogilvy -- Paul Casey
2008 (small win) Tiger Woods -- Stewart Cink
2007 (huge dud) Henrik Stenson -- Geoff Ogilvy
2006 (dud) Geoff Ogilvy -- Davis Love III
2005 (monster dud) David Toms -- Chris DiMarco

[Charlie]

Not only do the networks not want to gamble on the final pairings in match play, but the above low interest matchups is exactly why major events can't be match play. a couple tournaments a year is fine.

the issue with match play is that any golfer on the PGA has the ability to get hot for a round at any time. What seperates the top guys is that over 4 rounds the play top notch golf. in match play, all you have to do is play a little better than opponent. you can play bad if your opponent plays terrible, or get hot for the day and knock off a top golfer who played well but didn't string a ton of birdies together. match play doesn't find the best golfer, it finds the guy who got hot against the guy who played well and got a favorable matchup against someone who didn't play well on your off day. this is why no names often make it to the final.

Every tournament you can always find a few guys that had a great first round and then fell off the wagon, as opposed to a guy who steadily plays good golf and gets a top ten finish. As good as Rory played last week, all he had to do to be beat in match play was be paired up against jeff overton in the 3rd round. match play becomes luck of the draw.

[Charlie]

Not only do the networks not want to gamble on the final pairings in match play, but the above low interest matchups is exactly why major events can't be match play. a couple tournaments a year is fine.

the issue with match play is that any golfer on the PGA has the ability to get hot for a round at any time. What seperates the top guys is that over 4 rounds the play top notch golf. in match play, all you have to do is play a little better than opponent. you can play bad if your opponent plays terrible, or get hot for the day and knock off a top golfer who played well but didn't string a ton of birdies together. match play doesn't find the best golfer, it finds the guy who got hot against the guy who played well and got a favorable matchup against someone who didn't play well on your off day. this is why no names often make it to the final.

Every tournament you can always find a few guys that had a great first round and then fell off the wagon, as opposed to a guy who steadily plays good golf and gets a top ten finish. As good as Rory played last week, all he had to do to be beat in match play was be paired up against jeff overton in the 3rd round. match play becomes luck of the draw.

[BrianS]

In my opinion, the only time match play is more enjoyable to watch is during the team events, and I would say that is in spite of the format, not because of it. @Charlie listed one of the prime problems with match play in an individual event - it seldom identifies the best player over a 4 day period. In addition, it is less fun to watch because so much of suspense of golf is the idea that a player, even if they are leading, are only 1 bad swing away from a disaster, or conversely, one outstanding shot such as an eagle or even better see Ooosthuizen's albatross in this year's Masters- can drastically improve his situation. Under match play, that shot would be completely devalued - as long as the other guy made a 5, then a mere birdie is sufficient to take the hole. In this year's US Am, which was fairly enjoyable to watch, the problem was going up 18, there were only 2 possibilities - a win by Weaver or a tie - even if Weaver made an 8 and Fox holed out from the fairway, there was no chance for Fox to win it on that hole. For the live fans, elimination MP is inferior to watch - they don't even know which holes the player will be playing in advance, or even which players will be playing from one day to the next. I watch just about every PGA event, and I believe the Accenture (other than the first day, which is fun as 1/2 the field gets sent home - what do I care, I didn't buy a ticket for Day 2 ?) is about the least fun to watch on the weekend especially. It seems that the main argument for switching events to MP boils down to something along the lines of "its different than every other week". Maybe there is a good reason for the fact that all the Majors have been conducted SP for the past 50 years- it is a better style of golf all the way around.