"I think if we don't see a change, we'll be disappointed,"

Steve Elling considers the Barclays' move to Liberty National next year and offers this perspective from Barclays president Bob Diamond:

Last year, when Woods skipped The Barclays, the tournament was whipped in the ratings by the Little League World Series, televised on a cable outlet, ESPN. He acknowledged that was hard to stomach.  

"I think if we don't see a change, we'll be disappointed," Diamond said. "We'll see."

"Meanwhile the FedEx Cup remains a play for relevance via monetization and marketing, which looks especially silly every other year, when top players are more concerned about playing for God and country at the Ryder Cup."

Here I was thinking we had at least another two weeks before the FedEx Cup obituaries started rolling in and Cameron Morfit had to go and pen one before the art department could even come up with a cutesy graphic.

The FedEx Cup is stuck in a major end-of-season traffic jam. All of the individual events anyone cares about are over. In fact, judging from the breathless, parking lot stakeouts of Brett Favre, the press and public tuned out the Tiger-less Tour even during the year's final major. Paddy's PGA was no match for Brett's SUV.

And still the FedEx soldiers on despite the Olympics and an upcoming two-week break after the BMW Championship, necessitated by the Ryder Cup. Ultimately only 30 players will convene for the FedEx finale, the Tour Championship at East Lake outside Atlanta, because the smaller the field, the more "exclusive" (important) it is.

That's the idea, anyway. In reality a limited field holds limited appeal because it increases the likelihood that one hot player will run away with the tournament. It happened last year with Woods, but a mere mortal also could run away and hide with only 29 other guys chasing him. (A total of 315 players started the U.S. Amateur on Monday.)

Of course if there was a true playoff and daily eliminations at East Lake it wouldn't be so dull, would it?

Perhaps the FedEx champion won't be determined until the back nine on Sunday of the Tour Championship. That would be nice, but the rules are complicated. The Tour has arbitrarily narrowed the gap between players to start the playoffs, from 1,000 to 500 points. Every player who makes the cut at the Barclays will get 2,000 more points than he would have last year. This is meant to create more volatility up and down the standings.

The Amateur is simple. Two guys go into a match, and only one lives to play another day, sometimes after a wild momentum swing or five, which is typical of match play.

And if you had daily eliminations you would...oh continue on Cameron:

Meanwhile the FedEx Cup remains a play for relevance via monetization and marketing, which looks especially silly every other year, when top players are more concerned about playing for God and country at the Ryder Cup.

"The 41-year relationship between the PGA Tour and Westchester Country Club was like a good marriage gone bad."

While Bill Pennington celebrates the elegance of Tillinghast's Ridgewood, Sam Weinman files a compelling dissection of the messy decision to leave former Barclay's host Westchester. He writes for golf.com:

The 41-year relationship between the PGA Tour and Westchester Country Club was like a good marriage gone bad. There was the innocent beginning, the complacent middle years and then, finally, when the Tour's wandering eye led it to Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., the bitter, dish-throwing end.

And this does make any rational soul understand why the Tour had had enough:

Among the membership's longstanding agreements with the Tour was that during tournament week members could still play the adjacent South course, still play tennis on the courts that bordered the par-3 1st hole and still have access to the sports house that included the pros' locker room and a fitness center.

The uneasy coexistence was best encapsulated by an incident at last summer's Barclays, during which Tour player Aaron Baddeley was kicked out of the fitness center by a Westchester member who said Baddeley didn't belong there. (Westchester president Phil Halpern confirmed that an "older member" mistakenly thought the room was for members only.)

"I think what happened is that the Tour and its tournaments evolved, and what was acceptable and overlooked in the 1970s and '80s was no longer the case," says a PGA Tour official who requested anonymity. "Every host venue has evolved or been replaced, but they simply weren't of the mindset to evolve. You won't find another venue on Tour where they play tennis off the 1st hole or play the other course when the tournament's going on. I guarantee you there's not another locker room on Tour shared with members."

The Great Playoff Debate

Via email and not appearing for all the world to see, the PGA Tour's Steve Dennis and I debate the best possible format for the pPlayoffs.

Essentially, I'm arguing for a true playoff that lets someone get hot, get to East Lake and maybe pull off a big upset. Steve wants to protect the season points leaders and crunch numbers right up to the end.

Playoff Eliminations Begin!

I like this new FedEx Cup volatility. We're already down to 136 players and it's only Monday.

Tim Rosaforte reports that playoff fever got the best of Lee Westwood, who listed "holiday" as his reasing for pulling out. And to show just how much the playoffs meant to him, Bob Estes...

who finished 124th in the final FedEx Cup standings, scheduled his wedding for this week and is not on the tee sheet.

Vijay Wins On Eve Of PGA; Can't Wait To Try Out His Yips On Oakland Hills Greens

I did eventually fast forward through the final round at Firestone to watch poor Vijay (yep, it was that painful to watch him putt) stab it around the back nine. But only after I had watched, rewound, watched, rewound and watched yet again Commissioner Finchem and Jim Nantz's state-of-the-WGC's interview. I noticed Faldo wasn't included in on that one?

Anyway, Steve Elling on Vijay's win:

It's no stretch to assert that Singh essentially won the $1.35 million prize with 13 clubs, and despite the bane of his existence, which he holds cross-handed and anchored in his abdomen. At times, in that pose, he looks like a guy who is considering committing hari-kari.

Meanwhile this note from Doug Ferguson ought to have the numbers crunchers filing multiple reports on the 2.5 inch rough cut experiment:

A year after only one person (winner Tiger Woods) finished under par, there were 26 subpar scores.