Maybe the FedEx Cup playoffs are getting the last laugh.
Since their inception in 2007, the PGA Tour’s playoffs have been gently chided for manufacturing meaning at the end of a season that will begin again, in this year’s case, three days later, all while smothering the tournaments and the players in piles of money.
That part is true.
What’s also true is the FedEx Cup playoffs work.
They’ve made the PGA Tour better, provided a proper finish to a season that no longer fits inside the traditional calendar year. They’ve also become meaningful beyond the money, which remains impressively immense.
The playoffs have been around long enough now that they have history and being a FedEx Cup champion matters. It may not be the same as winning the green jacket at Augusta National or cradling the U.S. Open trophy, but $15 million (which the winner gets this year) goes a long way toward buying relevance.
Beyond the money, it’s an achievement that endures. Ask Bill Haas or Billy Horschel or Rory McIlroy. You can ask McIlroy twice because he’s won it twice.
This year, the set-up entering the Tour Championship at East Lake could hardly be better.
The top three players in the world ranking – Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas – will begin the 30-player finale on Friday sitting first, second and third on the preset leaderboard.
If the goal is to have the best playing against the best, this does it.
Purists can poke holes in how the scoreboard is weighted – giving Johnson a two-stroke lead ahead of Rahm and a three-stroke advantage ahead of Thomas before the first shot is struck – but it makes the storyline easier to follow than before when only Good Will Hunting could figure out the math behind what was happening.
It’s funky in that someone can shoot the lowest score this week and still not win, but it’s better than the old way.
There was a time when what Johnson has done in the first two playoff events – winning the Northern Trust by 11 and finishing second to Jon Rahm’s 66-foot sudden-death stroke of brilliance Sunday at the BMW Championship – would have locked down the championship already.
Not anymore.
As good as Johnson has been, and he’s brilliantly demonstrated his versatility in winning at 30-under par and losing in a playoff at 4-under par, he still has to finish what he’s started.
Just getting to the Tour Championship after the three-month pandemic-induced break is an achievement. When commissioner Jay Monahan pulled the plug after the first round of the Players Championship in March, almost no one imagined what followed.
That’s what playoffs do. They’re set up with an element of the unpredictable.
Just ask the 2007 New England Patriots, who were 18-0 until the New York Giants, who went 10-6 in the regular season, beat them in the Super Bowl. Feel free to pick your own example of playoff upsets – the 1983 North Carolina State men’s basketball team, Leicester City in the 2016 Premier League and the 1968 New York Jets come to mind.
This golf season is forever memorable for what it hasn’t been – normal.
Just getting to the Tour Championship after the three-month pandemic-induced break is an achievement. When commissioner Jay Monahan pulled the plug after the first round of the Players Championship in March, almost no one imagined what followed.
Even now, the absence of spectators has changed how PGA Tour events look and feel. Imagine the reaction to Johnson holing his playoff-forcing, 43-foot birdie putt on the 18th green at Olympia Fields Sunday followed by the blast of noise that would have come with Rahm’s game-winner from more than 20 yards away.
Fans aren’t coming back to tournaments any time soon but the PGA Tour has found a new, quieter rhythm. Different, yes, but a victory for the system, the compliance and the tour.
It’s possible someone outside the top three will win the FedEx Cup on Labor Day. This is only the second time this finale format has been used and McIlroy demonstrated what can happen last year when he started five strokes behind leader Justin Thomas and rolled to victory at East Lake.
Given the way Daniel Berger has played this year, particularly since the restart, it’s not outrageous to think he could win at East Lake, even spotting Johnson six strokes.
Johnson, who is playing in his 12th consecutive Tour Championship, has never won the FedEx Cup but he has been brilliant in the past two weeks. After flat-spotting in July, Johnson has been the dominating player he was during his extended run at No. 1 and his reaction after making his putt on the 72nd hole Sunday, exuberant by his standards, offered a hint of what these playoffs mean to him.
Rahm is relentless and he could make a strong case for player of the year if he wins in Atlanta. The challenge for him might be avoiding the unforced errors like the penalty he incurred in the rough on the 16th hole in the final round of the Memorial or his zone-out mistake of picking up his ball without marking it last Saturday at Olympia Fields. He won despite penalty strokes for both those mistakes.
Thomas is the PGA Tour’s only three-time winner this season and while he hasn’t done much since winning the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational four weeks ago, he figures to factor into the storyline this weekend.
It’s been an unusual path to this Tour Championship but it has produced a strangely satisfying run to Atlanta. Along the way, Collin Morikawa became a star, McIlroy revealed he’s going to be a father and Tiger Woods got left out of the finale.
Perhaps more than other seasons, this one deserves a celebration.
With masks and social distancing, of course.