Are the FedEx Cup Playoffs Rewarding the Wrong Players

Are the FedEx Cup Playoffs Rewarding the Wrong Players?

ATLANTA — With the PGA Tour's top players profiting, its chief was thinking about how to keep his stars intrigued and put resources into focused golf after the finish of the majors season.

Taking note of that the stars' nonappearance made it hard to get title patrons for competitions in the pre-fall and fall, the magistrate, Deane Beman, suggested a conversation starter in a 1985 meeting with the Los Angeles Times: "How would we make that work when a player gets rich and needs to take a break?"

The inquiry turned out to be all the more vexing throughout the years as the $200,000 single-year bonanzas of Beman's period offered approach to seasons like this one, wherein 54 players have earned at any rate $2 million and the last-place finisher at the Tour Championship, which starts Thursday, will get $395,000.

Beman's successor, Tim Finchem, began the FedEx Cup, a season-long challenge finishing in playoffs, in 2007 to continue the enthusiasm of players and fans after the last major had been played and to guarantee alluring fields for title backers of pooch days-of-the-period occasions.

Finchem's successor, Jay Monahan, acquainted more changes with the organization this year, streamlining the playoffs from four occasions to three, expanding the handbag and establishing a radical stunned begin for the Tour Championship, the finale of the playoffs and the season. The focuses pioneer, Justin Thomas, will begin the 72-gap occasion with a two-stroke lead over his closest challenger, Patrick Cantlay, and a 10-shot preferred position in the course of the last five qualifiers.

Each new emphasis of the playoffs, with their Fort Knox-size pot of gold toward the part of the bargain, has made Beman's worries feel progressively dated and bolstered another squeezing question: What does the visit esteem most, majors or cash?

The inquiry is even more important this week as the Tour Championship, which will present a $15 million payout on the victor — a $5 million increment over a year ago — is being held at East Lake Golf Club, when the stepping grounds of Bobby Jones.

Jones, who won each of the four of his time's majors in a similar schedule year, was a beginner spurred absolutely by an adoration for the game, and for rivalry.

No man since has won the alleged schedule Slam. The current year's majors season was book-finished by Tiger Woods' triumphant his fifth green coat at the Masters and the Irishman Shane Lowry's triumph in the British Open in Northern Ireland, which Monahan called "two of the best accounts of the year."

Neither Woods, who won the Tour Championship a year ago, nor Lowry is incorporated into this present season's last section, yet the 30-man field features 11 players, driven by Abraham Ancer, who didn't win a visit occasion this season.

"I believe that the story lines that create as you get to the back part of the arrangement and into our playoffs — and the expanded unpredictability that we're conveying — is making a convincing item for our fans, our center fans and those that we're looking to bring into our game," Monahan said.

Notwithstanding his significant triumph, Lowry, 32, posted second-, third-and eighth-place completes in 14 visit appearances, which was five less than Thomas made. At last, Lowry required more begins or higher completes in the initial two playoff occasions (he tied for 52nd and 48th), where more FedEx Cup focuses were granted.

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