I mean to say, I "get" it - the 4 richest sponsors of USPGA Tour events get together, and badger the tour to bunch their events in a "season finale" series that will lead to the crowning of a "FedEx Cup Champion", along with $10m, in an effort to keep golf on at least the inside back pages at a time when most US sports fans are now more interested in the impending MLB playoffs, the US Open tennis and even the pre-season NFL games.
But the format of it is so contrived - pretty much everyone on tour got to play in the first "playoff" event, the Barclays at New Jersey, so that it was won by Heath Slocum, who until last week was ranked 124th on tour. Because everyone's season-long points tally was "revalued" going into the playoffs, Slocum suddenly jumps from 124th to 3rd in the "FedEx Cup" standings with that one victory.
After another couple of weeks of this, the top 30 will go to the Tour Championship, where everyone's season-long points will yet again be revalued in a way that will probably but only probably mean the winner of the Tour Championship winning the FedEx Cup and the $10m with it, but in such a complicated system that no-one might know what the hell's going on if all the top seeds are halfway down the field. Why not just stick with the fact of what it is, and have a single Tour Championship event worth $10m to the winner, a bit like the tennis end-of-season Masters event?
But the format of it is so contrived - pretty much everyone on tour got to play in the first "playoff" event, the Barclays at New Jersey, so that it was won by Heath Slocum, who until last week was ranked 124th on tour. Because everyone's season-long points tally was "revalued" going into the playoffs, Slocum suddenly jumps from 124th to 3rd in the "FedEx Cup" standings with that one victory.
After another couple of weeks of this, the top 30 will go to the Tour Championship, where everyone's season-long points will yet again be revalued in a way that will probably but only probably mean the winner of the Tour Championship winning the FedEx Cup and the $10m with it, but in such a complicated system that no-one might know what the hell's going on if all the top seeds are halfway down the field. Why not just stick with the fact of what it is, and have a single Tour Championship event worth $10m to the winner, a bit like the tennis end-of-season Masters event?
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