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Grouchy Golf Blog

Tuesday, October 02, 2007 at 9:42 PM

FedEx Cup Recommendations

Creating a season-ending playoff system for professional golf is a tremendous challenge. While PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem has been taking a lot of flak lately, he should be commended for attempting such an ambitious venture. While the FedEx Cup has some serious problems, several of the can be used to make it better. What's important is that the PGA has taken its first step towards a playoff system.

But if Mr. Finchem asked me for some grouchy advice, I'd be happy to dispense them! Basically, I think that any playoff system for golf needs to conclude with a match play tournament. That way, players are forced to compete in every round/event to win all the marbles. I think that a point system should be retained, but only during the regular season. Points would accumulate for each player during the season, and would determine the qualification and seeding for a post-season match play event. This event would include the top 12 players placed into a 16-slot, 4-round bracket system. The top 4 players would receive automatic byes into the 2nd-round.

However, I've never liked typical match play tournaments where a player must beat an opponent over a single 18-hole match to advance to the next round. It allows too many upsets from inferior players riding a flash-in-the-pan hot streak. Instead, I'd like to see each round played in a best of three match format. In other words, each player must win two out of three matches to advance to the next round. One match would be played per day, so each round would be played over the course of three days, if necessary. This format would be dramatically less draining on players who would otherwise play a full 72 holes in a stroke play event. I envision one round per week and since there are only 4 rounds, it would cover the same amount of time as the current FedEx Cup format.

Imagine the excitement of watching such an event. The winner would be the indisputable golf champion and truly worthy of the FedEx Cup! What do you think?

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Anonymous Mizuno Jim said...

This would certainly make sure the best player surfaces. Unfortunately though, in this age of TV advertising, there is no network in the US that will sign up to air a golf tournament with an unknown ending time (=matchplay). The BBC in the UK is one of the very few stations that will actually air a complete matchplay event (HBSC Championship). Too much Corporate Pressure. If you think it's not that bad; read "Open" by John Feinstein and learn more about golf tournaments and TV schedules!!!

I agree with you: watching it would be exciting, but I think the only way to watch it will be to travel to the event and buy tickets! I guess we will all need to do some more thinking!

Keep up the good work, love the blog  

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Uummmm - no thanks. Matches taking 2 or 3 days to complete ? That might interest the cricket crowd, they are used to matches that last for days and days If it takes three days to complete a match, we might have to sell no-doze in the galleries.

The better match play players prefer a 36 hole match to even things out. Best of three 18 hole matches are still 18 hole matches.

Match play just doesn't get the viewership numbers going in the US. If the Fed Ex Cup were held in Europe, it would have a chance, but not in America.  

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Anonymous Andy Brown said...

The idea proposed here definitely seems like a much better idea than the present system in place and it would be interesting to see if going into the second season the tour would be willing to make any drastic changes to the system although they have shown willingness to tweak the format to accommodate the "nay sayers".

I am not sure whether having a matchplay tournament with just the top 12 players is financially as beneficial as having 4 "talked up" tournaments over a period of a month.

But if this idea were to be looked into then my idea to make the match play format a bit more entertaining would be to have a bit of a round robin thing going, to get rid of the boredom of a single match and also to see how the top player competes against the rest of the field (a part of the 12 man field). I am sure the players would give this idea the thumbs up because it allows them to focus on the task at hand, provide them with a bit of variation from the drills of the regular season and there is always that alluring scent of money which just happens to be a nice little $10 Million in this case. Now it is up to Mr Finchem to take the initiative and go in for some serious rethinking on the way he wants the playoffs to unfold.

Andy Brown  

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do we really need this much extra media/corporate stuff?

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I liked baseball when the winner of the American League played the winner of the National League in the Series to be called the best.

IMHO I think between the year long stroke average mixed in with performance in the Majors pretty much lets us know who is the greatest player. Any silly season type stuff added to that is just show biz  

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Blogger Tony at TheGolfSpace.com said...

Boy if Tiger is "tired" and needs to sit out of tournaments to "rest" (being the amazing physical specimen that he is), this grind would kill them. We'd have no players left for the following season.  

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