It’s the halfway point of the FedEx Cup chase, and the analyses are starting to roll in. USA Today notes that it really doesn’t seem as if anyone, other than PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem, cares.
Tiger apparently doesn’t give it much thought:
“Like most of the guys, you don’t really pay attention to it until probably after the (PGA Championship in August), and then you start taking a look at where things are stacking up because we’ve never gone through this system before,” says Woods, who does intend to play all four of the playoff events. “There’s a lot of volatility that can happen in the points. We’ll just play along and see what happens.”
What the Tour surely is hoping will happen is that interest will increase as it gets closer to the “playoffs.”
Ric Clarson, the Tour’s senior vice president for brand development, says two big events played in consecutive weeks — the Aug. 2-5 Bridgestone Invitational and Aug. 9-12 PGA Championship — will heighten focus because combined they’ll award 15% more points.
“We’re positioning them as the 15th and 16th games of the NFL season,” he said. “Those games determine who gets in the playoff and who has home-field advantage.”
I have to admit that I haven’t been following the FedEx Cup standings. Of far more interest to me are the World Rankings. I am. more and more. seeing golf as a world sport. Some of the best, and most interesting players out there right now are Europeans and Australians who don’t play full time on the PGA Tour.
The media—wittingly or unwittingly—apparently sees it the same. When media outlets hype an event, the discussion always is about how many of the top 50 players in the World Rankings are in attendance. I have yet to hear someone say “This is a major event because forty of the top fifty in the FedEx Cup standings are in the event.”
Perhaps that’s because the FedEx Cup is a year-to-date thing, and the world golf rankings are based on a couple of years of effort. But that’s the hurdle the FedEx Cup is going to have to overcome.
It may, however, turn out that the playoffs cause such excitement that next year the FedEx Cup standings do have an impact on people’s thinking.
We’ll see.
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