The start of Brian Rolapp's tenure as PGA Tour CEO has been promising.
Speaking ahead of the Players Championship, Rolapp announced a number of changes he wants to make to the tour in the coming future, involving an end to limited-field events, and making the tour a two-system.
The PGA Tour is effectively a two-tier tour now; there are the haves and the have-nots. Those finishing in the top 50 on the previous year's FedEx Cup standings find themselves in the eight (seven this year) Signature Events. With the four majors, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Memorial Tournament, the Players and potentially three FedEx Cup events, that's 19 events. Most of the top players aren't playing much more than 20 per season, meaning the rest of the PGA Tour calendar is to be largely filled by the have-nots.
Golf fans have been banging their heads against a wall for a number of years, wondering why seemingly obvious-to-make changes were not being made. The popular match play event was sacked off, seemingly because sponsors were less willing to part with good money to potentially see the star names eliminated early. Cuts were removed from most Signature Events for the same reason.
Rolapp, to his credit, said that he's found most of his ideas by thinking like a fan. There is, however, one fairly important issue that still doesn't look like being resolved anytime soon: the FedEx Cup play-offs.
American sports leagues love a grand finale. For the NFL it works as 32 teams don't play each other throughout the season, and a play-off series makes sense. Similar in the NBA with the Western and Eastern Conferences. Golf, whose season spikes four times a year, wanted a similar finale.
But the problem is what it's almost always been: the FedEx Cup is largely pointless in its current guise. While it might be nice to have some kind of post-season to help determine the best player, the PGA Tour has never fully settled on how to do that.
A year after its inception, Vijay Singh had already made the Tour Championship redundant in winning the FedEx Cup by way of having an insurmountable number of points prior to the final event, so the format was changed to ensure that couldn't happen again.
Between the change in the points system and the introduction of the much maligned starting strokes, FedEx Cup winners included Bill Haas, Brandt Snedeker and Billy Horschel. Going into their respective winning play-off campaigns, Haas ranked 41th in the OWGR, Snedeker ranked 29th and Horschel ranked 47th.
The FedEx Cup never really determined a 'season champion', it just gave already-wealthy golfers the chance to play for what was an eye-watering amount of money that made no difference to them, while fans were never swayed by the $10m/$15m/$18m bonus money despite its plugging for marketing purposes.
The attempt to glorify a play-off winner, implying that they have been the player of the year is misguided.
Therein lies the play-offs' biggest problem. The FedEx Cup should go some way to determining the year's best player, but in trying to make the play-offs exciting, it so often doesn't. Tommy Fleetwood's own mother wouldn't tell you he was the best player on the PGA Tour last season, but in finishing four shots better than Scottie Scheffler at the Tour Championship, he won the FedEx Cup.
The second issue is the Tour Championship itself. Fans have complained about the limited fields since the inception of Signature Events and rightly so. Who is interested in watching a tournament of just 30 players? There is no harm in expanding the field to 50, which can coincide with expanding the BMW Championship to 70 and the FedEx St Jude to 100.
Critics might say that in having the opportunity to win the FedEx Cup before even getting to the season finale cheapens the product, but there's nothing wrong with seeing 50 of the best players tee it up one last time for the season. Most golf tournaments are played for no more than a trophy at the end of the week and it's fine if the Tour Championship becomes the same.
Of course, in changing the format, you will have years where there are multiple players in with a chance of winning the FedEx Cup, which provides the drama the current format lacks. It's time for the FedEx Cup play-offs to serve its own purpose: get the 50 best players of the year together one last time, and with regards to any season-long rankings, let the cards fall where they may.
Golf is not like other American sports; it doesn't build towards a climax, but rather peaks four times throughout the year -- five if you include the Players Championship and six in Ryder Cup years -- it should accept that, rather than try be something it's not.
