The PGA Tour's New Playoffs: The FedEx Cup

How it Works and Potential Flaws

With the four major golf championships over with for the year, the PGA Tour golf season turns now to the inaugural playoff system known as the FedEx Cup. This four legged series starts with The Barclays on August 23rd, moves onto the Deutsche Bank Championship and the BMW Championship before finally culminating with The Tour Championship between September 13th and 16th.

Despite the fact that golf has a dedicated and loyal fan base, very few people actually know how this playoff style system will work and what to expect. Even many Tour players are a little perplexed with the FedEx Cup. So let's take a quick crash course on how it all works.

For starters, the FedEx Cup is modeled quite obviously off of NASCAR's several year old, playoff style Chase for the Cup. Just as in NASCAR, the majority of the PGA Tour schedule now comprises a "regular season". Points are awarded at all sanctioned tournaments (a total of 36 different tournaments spread over 33 weekends) for any player that makes the cut and the weekend play. The points are weighted to give more importance, in order, to the four majors and the Players Championship, followed by World Golf Championship events, regular tour stops and finally smaller tournaments which are played opposite of some of the larger events.

After the regular season schedule, the top 144 points earners are eligible to compete in the competition. Again, just as in NASCAR, the point totals are then recalculated so as to try to give everybody in the competition a mathematical chance to win. Realistically, the PGA Tour has used computer models in which nobody seeded lower than 13th won. At the top of the current leader board is a certain Mr. Woods-you may have heard of him.

Every week of the FedEx Cup loosely resembles a round of playoffs in a major team sport. Meaning, the players who did the worst that week are eliminated leaving a smaller and smaller field until the final week of the season. The Tour Championship also awards more points than the previous three events making it seem to hold more importance.