Off and running. Xander already putting some pressure on Scottie.

Update: Not anymore...Scottie up 6 on Xander and Morikawa as they tee off on 18.

Yep. That was quick.

Scottie just on cruise control hitting every approach pin high

Morikawa putting up a fight.

DannyDuberstein said:

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The risk of this format is the runaway victory. At least we have CFB this weekend

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I think they give too much cushion in this current format. I get gifting strokes for the final, but just do fewer of them.

Somewhere just as he was drawing his club back, he told an official he might have grazed the sand. They went back and watched video and confirmed it. Not exactly "grounding", but enough of an infraction to draw the two stroke penalty.

Edit: I couldn't see it on the replay, so they must have super zoomed in to see it.

AlwaysNextYear89 said:

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Somewhere just as he was drawing his club back, he told an official he might have grazed the sand. They went back and watched video and confirmed it. Not exactly "grounding", but enough of an infraction to draw the two stroke penalty.

Edit: I couldn't see it on the replay, so they must have super zoomed in to see it.

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He learned that from Patrick Reed

lead down to 2

And then 3 birdies in a row.

There's two kinds of people in this world

Scottie will now be 2nd all time in career earnings on the PGAT. Wow.

I can see why people think golf is boring watching Sheffler. Just hitting green after green, leaving yourself 10-15 foot birdie putts hole after hole after hole gets somewhat monotonous!!

28 years old

Monahan is such a chode. They've got to juice this event up more.

I’ve said it a million times I’ll say it one last time this season: the FedEx Cup playoffs need a rethink. Not delivering really on any front. I think you make the regular season the season-long race and then lean into something completely new for these weeks in August.

— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) September 1, 2024

Agree with this completely. As a Nascar fan it's similar to why I hate the playoffs over there... Though they're able do it better than the PGAT.

Award a season champion based off points. Utilize a final stretch completely different. Some (likely stupid) ideas off the top of my head...

Make the final 3 tournaments be aggregate.

Have Thursday and Friday of the tour championship only award holes under par and not penalize holes over par.

Match play tournament of some sort.

36 holes on a final Sunday.

Gave he top 5 from the season start the tour championship behind everyone else by some amount of strokes and if they win they get extra money than someone else winning.

ANYTHING to add juice. But remove the stupid playoff part from the equation of a tour champion. Award scottie for his season before this end run and then do something completely different for fun and big money down the stretch.

When they got rid of the Dell matchplay I was really hoping they would make the tour championship match play. Use the playoffs to narrow down to 32 and play it out at East Lake. Matchplay for 25 mil could be epic.

I'd split the $25M and give the regular season winner or guy #1 heading in to the playoffs $15M then $10M to whoever won the tour championship. There should be a reward for a great season and finishing #1. Then throw the points out and start over from zero in the playoffs. Make it a true playoff atmosphere. Atlanta would be just a regular 4 day tournament, no starting advantage. Might make things a little more interesting.

I agree. The starting advantage just doesn't feel very "golfy."

I thought the old way was fine, so what if you have a different guy win the tournament and not the Fed EX cup.

Match play would be fun too, but I doubt Fedex wants to run the risk of Sep Straka and Tom Hoge in the finals. No offense to them, they're world class golfers. But, they just don't move the needle.

Really just need top 16 for match play. You'd have plenty of names. Make the 2 prior tournaments a "drive for the final" elevated events vs playoff events.

That said, the issue with match play is that it's not very tv friendly at the end. To keep the course full of groups on Saturday and Sunday to help keep tv action going, have losers pair off to determine 3-16 where the money tiers are still significant.

Couldn't you just keep playing it out for 3rd, 5th, etc. The money differences are enough that everything would stay interesting. Two guys playing it out for an extra half million in the 5th place spot would still be decent golf to fill in between the 1st place match.

DannyDuberstein said:

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Really just need top 16 for match play. You'd have plenty of names. Make the 2 prior tournaments a "drive for the final" elevated events vs playoff events.

That said, the issue with match play is that it's not very tv friendly at the end. To keep the course full of groups on Saturday and Sunday to help keep tv action going, have losers pair off to determine 3-16 where the money tiers are still significant.

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16 doesn't fill 4 hours of air time on Saturday and Sunday.

8 matches concurrently would fill it, and moreso than 1 or 2 matches. That's why I was suggesting adding consolation matches that would fill out the schedule.

DannyDuberstein said:

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8 matches concurrently would fill it, and moreso than 1 or 2 matches. That's why I was suggesting adding consolation matches that would fill out the schedule.

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The difference in 16th and 15th is like $100k. Would those guys be motivated enough to continue playing?

The Dell Match play was one of my favorite events… on Thursday and Friday, but it was super anticlimactic on Sunday. The consolation matches fixes that, mostly, but I don't know if these guys want to grind out another round for that much?

The purse this weekend was $100 million. They can make the tiers for match play $500k starting with #16 getting $1mill to #2 getting $8mill, and the winner still $25 mill. That's a $93 mill purse.

DannyDuberstein said:

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The purse this weekend was $100 million. They can make the tiers for match play $500k starting with #16 getting $1mill to #2 getting $8mill, and the winner still $25 mill. That's a $93 mill purse.

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or you give season winners 50% of the $100M, based on Fedex Rankings foloowing the St Jude/FedEx and BMW.

Then Eastlake is for $50M in match play.

I think the lesson, that we've seen time and time again, is that purse size does not equate importance or interest. The events that matter will always matter regardless of the prize pool.

I know their goal with this format is that it's structured so that the player who is #1 wins. They want to give him the best advantage to win. So why even have an event? Just give out money.

Or the obvious answer: have 16 people make it and seed them into a match play bracket. The current handicapped start already has like half the field effectively eliminated before it started because they're so far back (in addition to not being as good of players as the top guys).

nm

I like the old format of the Tour Championship where you could still win the FedEx cup without necessarily winning the Tour Championship. Not a fan of the current system. If they want to do it that way, Scheff should have been given 10 strokes ahead of the field and 4 a head of Xander to start the tournament. Thats how far ahead he was of everybody

Yea I think they should just give the overall leader (Scottie) a few stroke lead based on how far in front of say 3rd-5th place he is, so it could change every year. Maybe it's 6 strokes this year, next year it's only 2.

Or like some have said, end the playoffs after the BMW and crown the season long champion, then just play the Tour Championship as a separate event the following week, maybe awarding points for the next season even.

Might also help to not have it at a meaningless course like East Lake

There is nothing they can really do to make fans care.

Golf is about the majors and a few other main tournaments per year. By the time football season starts most people have checked out of golf for the year.