The FedEx Cup Finale Is Here, But Don't Call It 'Playoffs'

Even Scottie Scheffler, the leader before he tees off, said this isn't the best format to identify the year's best player. Gary Van Sickle concurs.

ATLANTA, Ga. — About the FedEx Cup finale this week here at East Lake …

These are fake playoffs. Real playoffs feature upsets and the danger of losing. Like, say, when the Jacksonville Jaguars, behind quarterback Blake Bortles—Blake Bortles!—stunned the Pittsburgh Steelers to reach the 2017 AFC Championship game. Or any time the mighty New York Yankees got eliminated in the American League’s divisional playoffs.

No favorites get eliminated during the FedEx Cup. The top players who had strong seasons get The Wave directly to East Lake with two lucrative stops on the way to maybe improve their final starting positions. The only potential drama in the first two rounds is which players get left behind when the field is cut from 70 to 50 after Memphis and then from 50 to 30 after the BMW Championship. In other words, zero drama. Unless you’re still grieving about Justin Thomas, Akshay Bhatia, Adam Scott and Taylor Pendrith not being in Atlanta.

The final will have drama, if we’re lucky, and get a close finish. You may remember in 2010 when Jim Furyk, wearing his cap backwards in the rain, holed a putt to win the $10 million first prize. That was a moment, a good one. It just wasn’t a playoff moment.

Jim Furyk's emotion was compelling in winning the 2010 FedEx Cup. But was it a great "playoff" moment? :: Jeff Robinson/Getty Images

This is merely an entertainment vehicle. Some internet genius ranked the 10 most important golf events to win on the platform formerly known as Twitter and put the FedEx Cup third after the four major championships and the Ryder Cup. If only John McEnroe was available to scream “you cannot be serious!”

Yes, every golf tournament is entertainment and a television show first, a golf tournament second. (Sorry about that, U.S. Open.) But the Tour Championship is rigged to guarantee that all the marquee players make it to East Lake. It was originally designed to make sure Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson weren’t left out, as often happened in the old Match Play Championship, a World Golf Championships event.

Scottie Scheffler ranks No. 1 this week and will start this unique format with a two-shot lead over Viktor Hovland and a 10-shot lead over the bottom five players in this 30-man field.

Scheffler called it like he saw it Wednesday morning: “I wouldn't say this the best format to identify the best golfer for the year. I get it. It's made for TV. It may be more exciting for the fans to have this type of format. But I'm starting this week with a two-shot lead and we’re playing for a lot of money. I'm not complaining about it. I'm very grateful for that.”

Remember when PGA Tour players and backers ridiculed LIV Golf for having small 48-player fields and no cut? The Tour Championship has only 30 players but the difference is, they had to qualify for this based on their season-long play. The LIV Golf players were simply ordained for their well-paying positions.

Your reigning Masters champion, Jon Rahm, declined to rank the FedEx Cup’s importance while he’s here this week. He’s a polite guy. He simply stated the obvious, that the majors are golf’s biggest deals, but that this week feels different because it’s “a culmination of a whole year in these last three weeks.”

Does the FedEx Cup system work? Sometimes. Like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Vijay Singh. But sometimes you get Brandt Snedeker, Billy Horschel and Bill Haas.

A format change won’t happen. At least the staggered start puts all players on the same page, scoring-wise. The days of unlucky Steve Sands doing serious math on live TV for Golf Channel as he calculated the constantly changing FedEx Cup point totals are over. With the players taking control of the PGA Tour Policy Board after the addition of Tiger Woods, which gives them a majority, the FedEx Cup is unlikely to change. Why mess with success? And even better, why mess with this kind of guaranteed money?

“Of all the iterations of the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup playoffs, I think this is the best one yet,” Rory McIlroy said Wednesday. “I can’t sit here and say I’ve thought of something better. I like it this way. It gives the guys who had better years an advantage going into the week, which I think they should have. I think it works pretty well right now.”

Of course McIlroy likes it. He won the FedEx Cup three times, including last year, and bagged $33 million. That’s the very definition of “it works pretty well right now”… for him.

Well of course Rory McIlroy likes the FedEx Cup, he's won it three times (2016 pictured) :: Adam Hagy/USA TODAY Sports

The meaning of the FedEx Cup. Mainly, it’s the $18 million first prize. Are we supposed to be on pins and needles wondering whether Scheffler, who has already won $19 million this year, can snag even more dough that he doesn’t need and will never spend?

Thanks to LIV Golf and the PGA Tour’s new elevated-event prize money, $18 million already doesn’t sound like that much anymore. Not after we saw Dustin Johnson rack up $35 mill last year on the rival LIV Golf circuit.

Money is the only weapon the PGA Tour has in its arsenal. And the Saudis had way more, hence the PGA Tour-LIV golf agreement/merger/takeover/standoff. The top players like Scheffler and McIlroy and others already have such big bank accounts, they truly do play for the trophies, not the money. As Open Championship winner Brian Harman said, when asked what he’d splurge on if he happened to win the $18 million this week: “I got everything I need, man.”

The deciding factor. The tour’s Player of the Year honor may come down to this week. It’s a two-horse race between Scheffler and Rahm. Will winning a 30-man golf outing really make a difference in determining who had a better year? Rahm won a Masters, Scheffler won a Players Championship and had a Tiger-esque ball-striking year according to the stats.

“Scottie hit the ball as good if not better than Tiger hit it in 2000, which is the benchmark for all of us,” McIlroy said. “But Jon probably has a little more to show (for his season). Scottie has won twice, Jon has won four times. It depends what you value.”

The Atlanta 500: Last place this week pays $500,000. This year, $500k ranks 161st on the money list, a few dollars behind Cameron Percy. Eighty players won $2 million or more. Seven players topped $10 million … so far. Nice work if you can get it. In 1988, Curtis Strange became the first player to win $1 million in a season, a seemingly amazing feat at the time.

Golf has never been richer than it is now. The question remains: Is it better?

You make the call.