Editor's note: This story was originally published July 29, 2025, on The First Call's Substack platform.
Remember when Leonardo DiCaprio and his frosty icicle-hair finally sank beneath the waves at the end of “Titanic”? Or, if you are a Notre Dame fan, remember when Ohio State mopped the field with the Fighting Irish in college football’s national championship game this year?
Yeah, it felt just as soul-draining Sunday when the FedEx Cup axe fell in Memphis and Aldrich Potgieter and Jake Knapp finished outside the top 50 point-getters and thus did not advance to the second round of the FedEx Cup or the finale extravaganzapalooza in Atlanta. A tragedy beyond words.
Pardon my sarcasm — although you should expect it by now — but here’s the ongoing problem even with the new-and-improved FedEx Cup Playoffs format. The top players such as Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and the rest are stone cold locks to play in Atlanta. McIlroy was able to skip the swampy sweat-fest in Memphis because he amassed enough points during the regular season that he didn’t have to worry about making it to Atlanta, where everyone starts from scratch to scramble for the $10 million.
So the drama at the St. Jude Championship was all about which 20 players were eliminated as the contenders were cut from 70 to 50. The problem is, the public has minimal interest in those second-tier names, although long-ago major champ Jordan Spieth was one of them. (He can’t possibly get picked to the Ryder Cup team again, can he?)
I actually like Potgieter, a big hitter who is fun to watch, and there’s something about Knapp, who has just the right amount of swagger. But the suspense factor for the 70-to-50 cutdown is near zero. In fact, the FedEx Cup system has never created its own interest. I have never heard any average fan discuss the points or where a player stands in the rankings. Only the TV talking heads jam it down our throats because they have to since they are essentially PGA Tour employees even if they don’t want to admit it.
Last year, the players had incentive to do well and earn a better placement in the handicapped starting system. As you recall, the No. 1 player began the finale at East Lake at 10-under par before striking a shot; the No. 2 man began at 8 under and so on, with the bottom part of the field starting at even par. That concept took a hit from public criticism, which is like saying the Titanic was merely grazed by that iceberg.
But once the tournament started, at least everyone knew where the players stood on the scoreboard and the confusing Rubik’s Cube that was the points system could be discarded. That also meant only one winner. So it was awkward as hell but it was an improvement.
There used to be a Tour Championship winner and a FedEx Cup winner and now there is only one. The all-time great FedEx Cup moment still has to be Bill Haas winning the Tour Championship in a playoff, posing with the trophy and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, and asking, “Who won the FedEx Cup?” Finchem informed him that he did. Haas didn’t know. At least the much maligned starting points system fixed that.
There is no good way to determine a season-long champion in one, two or three golf events when the PGA Tour isn’t willing to commit to real playoffs. In baseball, especially, the best teams over the 162-game regular season often get eliminated during the playoffs. The PGA Tour never wanted to do that for the same reason it revised the popular World Match Play Championship, which originally had a one-and-done format. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, the game’s biggest starts, got beat in the early rounds too often, leaving the Tour and television with dramatic finales like Pierre Fulke versus Steve Stricker, Kevin Kisner versus Matt Kuchar and Kevin Sutherland versus Scott McCarron. So the Tour revised it to a round-robin pod system that guaranteed each big name would play for at least three days. That killed what made the Match Play so much fun to watch and, eventually, the tournament went away along with the other failed World Golf Championships.
Match play is fun to watch. Each hole has an outcome. But television hates it because there is no way to predict how long a match will last. If a player rolls to a 7-and-6 win, TV may be caught having to fill an hour of dead air while knowing that viewers have already clicked to a different channel.
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Many iterations of how to finish the PGA Tour season have been suggested. Match play is not an option because of the TV situation. So forget about it.
What else is there? How about reducing the field each round at East Lake, finishing on Sunday with only the top four players? No, you might lose Scheffler or McIlroy if you do that. So that’s out, at least from the Tour’s standpoint. It wants a big-name showcase at the end. Also, the smaller the field size, the easier it is for one player to pull way ahead early and wipe out any suspense.
The current format is the best available option if a 30-player finale field is required. That $10 million first prize is supposed to be exciting enough. It was when Jim Furyk, with his hat on backwards, made that putt in the rain to win the money.
But does $10 million even really mean that much anymore? Scheffler has already won $20 mil this year and McIlroy has $16 mil. Even J.J. Spaun has $12 mil. How about this? Sepp Straka has won $10 million. Tom Hoge is No. 30 on the current money list and has won $4 million. The $10 mil first prize, believe it or not, is no longer going to be life-changing money for whichever player wins it. Inflation is a bitch. It’s like paying 200 yen for a bottle of Coke in Japan.
The best way to create a chance for a thrilling finish is the model the PGA Tour has used for decades, the model it used to get to this point in its empire — a full-field event of 120 or 144 players. These guys are good, the old slogan said, and some of them are going to go low every single round. Let the cream rise to the top. The leaderboard is more likely to be filled and closely packed, thus potentially creating more surprises.
Even if a player ranked 120th won the Tour Championship and withstood the pressure of that $10 million prize, so much the better. But he wouldn’t exactly classify as a Cinderella story. Thorbjorn Oleson, currently 120th on the money list, has already won more than $920,000 this year.
The money flows freely on the PGA Tour these days. It’s a Golden Age for golfing millionaires. Which multimillionaire is going to land the big prize in Atlanta? No matter who it is, he won’t really need it. And he won’t change the world order of golf in which Scheffler and McIlroy stand at the top.
All we want is an exciting finish and the FedEx Cup series has delivered those many times. From that Bill Haas playoff to the Dustin Johnson-Jon Rahm playoff that ended with DJ’s 60-foot putt to Tiger’s resurrection and just last week when Justin Rose birdied four holes in a row near the end, then won a playoff over Spaun.
FedEx Cup points don’t matter. Money doesn’t matter even when it has seven zeroes. If the Tour Championship keeps dishing out thrilling showdowns, we’ll keep watching.
After that it’s football season.
