By Patrick Whalen

The PGA Tour has announced more changes, this time to the FedEx Cup and playoff format. The previously announced schedule changes were all about shuffling tournament dates including moving the PGA Championship from august to may and moving The Players Championship from may to march. The schedule changes also included cutting one of the four FedEx Cup playoffs stops which just happened to be the Dell Technologies Championship hosted by TPC Boston. It was a real shame to see the tour cut out a tournament like the Dell Technologies especially seeing how the only other tournament that comes to the New England area is the Travelers Championship in Connecticut. People from all over New England would mark their calendars for labor day weekend to make their way to TPC Boston to see their favorite PGA stars play one of the best golf courses on tour. The crowds were always large and loud for their favorite stars especially on the weekend but to see this stop on the PGA tour removed from the annual rotation is just a travesty.

The new announcement from the PGA was concerning the playoffs themselves and the format. Obviously, with only three events rather than four, the tour was obviously going to adjust the FedEx cup points but the did much more than that. The basis of these changes was to eliminate the awkward scenario at the Tour Championship that occurred last year where Xander Schauffele won the tournament but Justin Thomas was crowned the FedEx Cup champion. These changes have been made to supposedly avoid that happening, the tour wants the tour champion being the FedEx Cup champion. So they chose to now take the FedEx Cup standings and translate them into starting at a certain amount under par to start the tournament. So the points leader going into the week will now start the tournament at 10 under par before they even tee off, second place will then start at 8 under, third place at 7 under, fourth place at 6 under, and fifth place at 5 under. Places 6-10 then start at 4 under, 11-15 start at 3 under, 16-20 at 2 under, 21-25 at 1 under and finally 26-30 at even par.

These changes are absolutely ludacris for anyone who is actually a real fan of golf or has played in a tournament golf setting. The tour has now opened up a can of worms they haven’t considered, if a player that starts at 2 under then shoots lights out and ends up shooting 15 under without his predetermined strokes. So that player could be at 17 under for the tournament but the leader who starts at 10 under would only have to actually shoot 8 under for the weekend. Any other week on tour player a would have player b beat by 7 shots but now player b will somehow win the tournament.

Giving the strokes as an advantage would be acceptable if the FedEx Cup was still a reward for an entire seasons performance but the tour has now created the Wyndham rewards top 10 that is a money bonus for the top 10 players regular season performance. So the FedEx Cup is now more of just a playoff champion trophy rather than a season total champion. So if a player gets hot much like how Bryson DeChambeau did in this postseason and wins the first two tournaments he now gains a 10 stroke advantage before he even tees off. You could now have players who have done absolutely nothing this year when it comes to top 10s and actually winning tournaments get hot for two weeks and walk into the Tour Championship with a ten shot advantage. Just imagine being a player like Justin Rose or Dustin Johnson this year playing great golf for most of the year and walking into the Tour Championship with the FedEx Cup on the line and being 2 or 3 strokes down before you even tee off just because one player got hot for two weeks.

The tour may think this solves problems like having a different Tour Championship winner and FedEx Cup winner or fans not being able to understand the points rankings and how they are determined but they’ve now opened up a new can of worms that I don’t think they’ve considered. The FedEx also became even a bigger deal to players wallets as the money pool is increasing from $35 million to $60 million with the cup winner receiving $15 million and if a player misses out on that kind of payday because of a stroke a play received before even teeing off. The tour has probably created more problems than it has actually solved with all these new format changes.