The PGA Tour: Our Modest Proposal

As the PGA Tour is about to make one of its infrequent appearances in Maryland, we’ll take this opportunity to present our ideas on “fixing the tour and the FedEx Cup”.

We suggest taking the “European soccer” approach: two separate season-long competitions, the Regular Season and The Cup. Give performance during the regular season some due reward, without having to then finish it off by navigating the current playoff system.

Call it “The [Insert Big Name Sponsor Here] Championship Season”.  Includes all of the year’s tournaments (including the four “majors”), but doesn’t include the events that comprise “The Cup”.  A points system determines the regular season champion.  The final tournament of the regular season is the end of the regular season competition: distribute the regular season competition bonus prize pool without playoffs.  The points leader at the end of the regular season is the PGA Tour Champion, as he should be.

The points system should be dynamic to allow for the strength of the field in a particular week:

• Use a player ranking system to assign each of them a certain number of points that they bring to that week’s tournament points pool (i.e. the higher your ranking, the more points you “contribute” to the tournament’s points pool).  
• Add up the points “contributed” by all the players competing that week and award them at the end of the week using the same formula used to distribute the weekly monetary prize pool.  
• Extra points can be added to the pools of the “majors”.

The eight current “Signature Events”, plus the current “FedEx Cup playoffs”, become the separate annual Cup competition.  The Cup has its own points system, applied to the first eight Cup events of the year.  The final three rounds are still The Cup Playoffs, but participants are only based on results in that year’s Cup tournaments.

The Cup playoffs are true playoffs.  The “knockout rounds”. No carryover of points from previous events.  If you finish in the top 70 in points after the first eight Cup tournaments, you get an invitation to the first round of the playoffs.  Finish in the top 50 of the first playoff tournament and you move on to the second round.  Finish in the top 30 of the second playoff tournament and you get to go to the final round.  You can add some drama by using some form of playoff (a shootout!) to break ties for the last spot(s) in the next round.

And move the playoff sites around from year to year. The playoffs really don’t need to be played at the same courses in Memphis and Atlanta every year. Use a much wider net to choose the playoff sites. It’s an opportunity to include major metropolitan areas that don’t currently have annual tournaments: Washington/Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, the Bay Area…

• Top 70 in the previous year’s Cup (given the methods of qualifying for the Cup, this pretty much insures including all of your current top players) (70 golfers)
• Top 30 from the points list for the previous year’s regular season (max 30, should usually be significantly less after already qualifying the top 70 from The Cup)
• Winners of major tournaments in the past five years (max 20)
• PGA Cup champions from the past ten years (max 10)
• PGA Tour Champions (regular season winners) from the past ten years (max 10)
• Regular season and Cup individual tournament winners from the previous two seasons
• Fall Season tournament winners from the previous year
• Use the cumulative results of the Fall Season (after the end of the regular and Cup seasons) to fill remaining spots

• Everyone who qualified for the final round of The Cup playoffs in the previous year (30 golfers)
• Top 30 from the points list for the previous year’s regular season (max 30)
• Winners of major tournaments in the past five years (max 20)
• PGA Cup champions from the past ten years (max 10)
• PGA Tour Champions (regular season winners) from the past ten years (max 10)
• Regular season and Cup tournament winners from the previous two seasons, plus regular season winners in the current year (Cup tournament winners in the current year are already playing in The Cup)
• Fall Season tournament winners from the previous year

So, there’s all your answers. You’re welcome.