The Fed Ex Cup fails to deliver for the PGA
Ho-hum. The Fed Ex Cup is over. Finally. It made Tiger Woods $10 million richer (in escrow), but did it make the PGA any richer? Probably not. The PGA hasn't said much about an increase in ratings. And it's easy to wonder if the PGA might go broke if the $10 million it has to keep shelling out each year turns out to be $30 million or more when fully vested.
So why did the Fed Ex Cup flop big-time? Here are a few reasons:
1. The Fed Ex Cup seemed no different than a regular tour event, even lesser in stature than the World Golf Championship events. It didn't help that Tiger Woods wouldn't ever acknowledge that the Cup meant anything more to him than winning a tournament. Let's face it, the PGA is not NASCAR.
2. The scoring system was a mystery and left only 3 players in contention for the final tournament. Why not start the final 30 all from scratch for the final tourney?
3. The golf season is long enough, the Fed Ex Cup only made it longer -- forcing the marquee players like Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, and Ernie Els have to skip a week to be with family (such as at the start of their kids' school). The FedEx Cup could be reduced to 2 weeks, a complete shootout.
4. PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem didn't consult with some of the top players enough for settling on the format. It doesn't help when the marquee players are criticizing the Fed Ex Cup.
12 Comments:
I don't agree with all your points.
1. This one has it merits. It would help if the tournaments didn't have regular tournament names and instead something that signified their importance, like the WGC has.
2. I agree on this. Why reset the points at all? If Tiger had won 10 tournaments this year and no one else had won more than 2, should there be any possibility that anyone else could win the championship? Or maybe it should be a complete reset and every player starts at 0 like in a tournament.
3. It seems like Phil, Tiger and Ernie take off plenty of time as it is. Don't they get a lot of criticism for cherry picking their tournaments? This doesn't wash with the average fan. Who wouldn't like to play golf for 16 days over a month? Joe Six Pack can't relate to the grind of having work for 4 weekend straight.
4. The players weren't forced to play in the FedEx Cup. If some of the top players sat it out, maybe the commish would listen.
"it's easy to wonder if the PGA might go broke if the $10 million it has to keep shelling out each year turns out to be $30 million or more when fully vested." once the deposit of $10 Million is made it will not cost the PGA tour any more. The $10M is invested and could be worth $2 or $50M when the player retires and it does not cost the PGA Tour any more.
Point 1. I agree but the first year of the World events they had little credibility beyond a regular tour event. now several years later they are a step below the Majors and a step above the regular tour events. give the FedEX Cup a few years and lets see if it has moved up to the World events level.
Point 2. The scoring system has been posted on the PGA tour web site since fall of 2006. It may not have given many players a chance in the final event but it was announced well ahead of time. Just because most people (players, Media and fans) ignored it until the actual events began did not make it a mystery. The Commish even stated it would be difficult for players to move from the bottom to win the FedEX Cup without winning three of the events.
Point 3. Yes January to mid September is longer than January to November. Oh wait the season is shorter now but August to the end of September is now a busy season with PGA, WGC, FedEX Cup and Ryder/Presidents cup. But with the FedEX cup setup the way it is a player can take a week off and play 6 of 9 weeks and still win just about everything. Way to go Tiger!!!!!!!!!!
Point 4. The players had chances to be involved and informed but since the players are independant contractors most chose to ignore the meetings to discuss/cahnge the FedEX Cup.
I believe the Fed-Ex cup is not set up properly. I think it should be more like the playoffs in other sports. Lets say the top 100 make the playoffs, and all the points are wiped out. Then the top 75 move on next week, cutting the worst 25 from that specific event. Then the top 50 move on from the second tournament, then the top 30, and the winner of the tour championship is also the fed ex cup winner.
That way, the 100th place person in the regular season can just as easly win as the 1st. Its kinda like sudden death, you have to finish in the top so many to move on to the next week!
In hockey, once the regular season is over, the playoffs become a seeded tournament as if the regular season didnt exist. The Fed-ex cup takes into account points from the regular season, unlike football, hockey, baseball, etc
1) Fedex is paying the $35 M in bonus money - not the tour...?
2) The scoring system was not a mystery and the players had ample time to get up to speed on it.
3) This golf season is shorter than usual...not longer. This new schedule is one of the reasons Tiger has the longest break from PGA Tour play of his career. Top tier players griped about the playoff scheduling as they felt it was too much in a compressed time.
4) No - it doesn't help when the marquee players critize...but that they did must speak volumes about how the Fedex gets reshaped going forward.
I'm thinking WAAAY outside the box, but what if it was seeded like a tournament -- a combo of stroke play and head-to-head matchups?
144 players are seeded into a tournament chart based on regular season ranking, making 72 matchings. Winners move on... if you want to, give top players byes and have the first event be a sort of wild card playoff, then run a few smaller fields to taper things a bit more.
Probably would never happen, but you'd get the opportunity to see someone shoot some outstanding golf in a pinch and possibly knock off a playoff favorite, and certainly a bigger sense of urgency out of each round.
The only thing that worked for me was having 3 successive high profile tournaments wiht "almost" complete fields in NY, Boston and Chicago. That was neat.
I don't see anybody ever getting excited about Fedex Cup standings and you can't conjure a major into thin air with money, especially annuity money, which is a gimmick to make the amounts sound bigger than they really are. The net present value of the winners money probably isn't alot different than a regular tour win check.
What I don't like about the Cup is that they have basically ruined the Tour Championship. Here was a tournament that had a lot of prestige among the players and had built up a 30 year legacy. It was close to the Players Championship in terms of importance. Now they've made it so the Tour Championship winner looks like a ninny standing next to the Fedex Cup winner (Tiger probably won't win both every year, and nobody else has the talent to pull that off.) As long as they insist on the Fedex Cup, I would prefer they move the finals to Pebble or somewhere interesting and move the Tour Championship back to November. A playoff implies you are playing against each other to determine who is the best golfer. Golf doesn't work like that. The winner of Fedex Cup will never be viewed as the best golfer of the year. That was never the purpose of the Tour Championship. Golf isn't football. The Player of the Year award and the World Golf Rankings determine who the best player is.
All this talk about wiping out the points. Well Tiger would still have one. He won the PGA and the week before. Therefore he would have won anyway.
Everyone is saying Golf is not Football. And they are right.
And I agree with some of the players. These folks have wives and children.
They have to try to balance being gone so many weeks a year plus four straight weeks is more then my family would be happy with.
Wow, who wrote this rubble?
To the opening paragraph, since Fed Ex is sponsoring the FedEx Cup, in all likelihood they are the ones paying the 35 million. Second, even if the tour owes Tiger 50 million by the time he collects it, the excess 40 million will be due to proper investment of the the original 10 million, and will not cost the tour anything.
To point 1, the events did have great fields, on great courses. Does the WGC series really even mean much to win anyway? Tiger's won over half, but name the other guys who have actually won one? No set of tournaments will equal the majors, but having an end of year series may come close eventually. The first US Open didn't mean much either, and the PGA wasn't even a major the first year it was around. Be patient and give stuff some time.
Point 2. No, it was not a mystery. I understood it just fine. As long as you do proper research and are not a complete idiot, it is quite easy to grasp. Starting the final 30 from scratch would be extremely dumb - the first 3 tournaments wouldn't mean a thing. Tiger could skip all of them and still win the Cup. There's a situation the tour would enjoy.
To Point 3. The Fed Ex Cup made the season shorter. Having a two week tournament would not be ideal. That's not nearly enough time to allow a deserving champion to win. Let's face it, who actually wants Michael Putnam or someone similar to be the Fed Ex Champion?
To Point 4. I am sure Tiger and Phil were consulted. It'd be too stupid not to. However, just because they were consulted doesn't mean that they got everything they wanted. You cannot please everyone.
Finally, to those who complain that only 3 players had a chance to win, when the first 3 events are won by 3 different players all near the top of the points standings who also did well in one of the other two events, should they be able to lose to someone who goes MC, t-60, MC, Win after finishing the season at 106th for the regular season?
I'll say this. People doubt the Fed Ex Cup. But aside from two or three minor flaws, it does it's main function quite well: It provides great fields on great courses, and will reward the most deserving player. Would you rather have a BCS system like many of your arguments would bring about. Put an empty week between events two and three. Change the advertising that forces it on people. That's really about it.
Do that, and I promise the system will work just fine in the long run. It is actually a very precisely engineered system, that will stand the test of time without many changes. Stop complaining and watch some great golf with a lot of money on the line.
I agree - the winner of the Cup was all but a formality (barring a total collapse) by Tiger after a couple of weeks. I think fan interest or lack thereof was borne out in the lack of TV ratings. Of course, given the fact that a lot of the players don't fully understand the Fed Ex Cup points sytem, it's probably unrealistic to expect the fans to.
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