Happy fifth birthday, you weird misfit Tour Championship scoring system.
Who knew you’d make it even this far? For decades they kept tinkering with different ways to do a golf playoff. Oh, how they struggled to come up with something that recognized a golfer’s season-long body of work while maintaining competitive interest to the end. Not exactly the Manhattan Project, but lots of trial and error nonetheless.
In 2019 came the – ta-dah! – staggered scoring system that will be in play again this week at East Lake Golf Club.
And every year since, the sporting media has to continually explain that, as in this week’s case, for instance, FedEx Cup points leader Scottie Scheffler will begin the Tour Championship at 10 under, while No. 2 man Xander Schauffele will be at 8 under, and how the other 28 players in the field are assigned progressively lower starting scores according to their season-long points standing. Then, whoever finishes with the low net score on Sunday wins more money than he could carry out of town on two mules.
Unwieldy, yes. But the stagger has survived, hanging in there like that slice off the tee you can’t shake. Long live the stagger.
Five years later, one peculiar word keeps popping up now when discussion turns to Tour Championship scoring. Not exactly one guaranteed to build self-esteem:
Silly.
Keegan Bradley used it Sunday after he turned around a lackluster season with a win at the BMW Championship playoff event. With that single win he zoomed up the points standings from 50th to 4th in one week, conceivably in range to overtake six-time winner, Masters champion and Olympic gold medalist Scheffler at the Tour Championship. All Scheffler got for his season-long excellence was a 4-shot head start on Bradley this week.
“I know, that is a little silly,” Bradley told the media at the BMW.
“Geez, I’ll take it. When I showed up here this week, honestly I didn’t think I’d be going to Atlanta.”
Scheffler employed the “S” word at the start of these playoffs, the FedEx St. Jude Championship two weeks ago.
“I talked about it the last few years. I think it’s silly,” he said then.
He would think that, for after all, this will be the third straight year Scheffler has arrived in Atlanta as the leader in the clubhouse before unpacking his bags. And despite the 10 under advantage, he’s still looking for his first Tour Championship victory.
Scheffler added, “You can’t call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament. Hypothetically we get to East Lake and my neck flares up and it doesn’t heal the way it did at the Players, and I finish 30th in the FedExCup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament? Is that really the season-long race? No. It is what it is.”
Certainly there is a ton of recency bias built in here. But isn’t that the way of so many other playoff systems? It’s why anyone bothers to watch.
Tell any of the eight Major League Baseball wildcard teams that have won the World Series that they were unworthy because of so-so regular seasons.
Tell the 2007-08 New York Giants they weren’t true Super Bowl Champions, because the Patriots were 16-0 over the long haul of scheduled games.
Georgetown beat Villanova twice during the 1984-85 basketball season. Does that mean its epic upset victory over the Hoyas in the tournament final shouldn’t count as a championship?
Perspective is a many-faceted prism, shining so many different hues on an issue. Many of those who come here chasing Scheffler don’t think the staggered scoring silly at all.
As Rory McIlroy told the golf media a couple weeks ago: “I love this format because, if it wasn’t this format, then none of us would have a chance against Scottie because he’s so far ahead.”
“Is it the fairest reflection of who’s been the best player of the year?,” McIlroy said. “Probably not. But I think at this point we’re not in for totally fair, we’re in for entertainment and for trying to put on the best product we possibly can.”
If the FedEx Cup was determined on season points alone – as it once was – this week would be little more than a two-man show. That’s how dominant Scheffler and Schauffle have been this year
The best are being asked to prove it, one more time, no different from most other playoffs.
“I don’t think it’s a perfect system,” Collin Morikawa (who’ll start 4 under Thursday), said two weeks ago. “Guys can complain about this and that. (But) if you’re the best, you want to show up, you have to show up, especially at the Tour Championship. That’s just how things work.”
So, happy fifth, you wacky format.
And when they hand out the birthday cake, make sure Scottie Scheffler gets a little bit bigger piece than anyone else.
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