The Tour Championship is Wonky and Sports Need More of It

The Tour Championship will be played under different rules this week, and the rest of the sports world should take notice.

The PGA Tour has done something few sports have the spine to do: The PGA Tour has changed how golf is played. By instituting a NASCAR style poll-position format for the Tour Championship, players are subjected to the benefits and disadvantages of strokes they haven’t made – something that has never been done before.

Regardless of how you feel about the specifics of the change to the Tour Championship, the PGA Tour should be applauded for its effort to enhance the enjoyment of its product.

Of course, that is the point of professional sports – to produce a game that is enjoyable to its largest core of investors: fans. For whatever reason, and there are many, human beings love sports. A scientist might say that the endorphins released while playing sports reduce the brain’s perception of pain making the participant feel happy. Jimmy Fallon might say in the 2005 classic, Fever Pitch, that rooting for a team you have no control over is good for the soul.

More from Pro Golf Now

• Golf Rumors: LIV set to sign Masters Champion in stunning deal
• Fantasy Golf: Grant Thornton Invitational DFS Player Selections
• Brutal return leaves Will Zalatoris looking towards 2024
• Stars You Know at World Champions Cup Starts Thursday at Concession
• Fantasy Golf: An Early Look at the 2024 Masters Tournament

Each individual on this planet has their reasons for loving the games they do. But it is abundantly clear that on the list of the world’s top priorities, sports rank somewhere between Climate Change and avoiding nuclear war.

It is this level of scrutiny that makes sports so often resistant to change. Baseball, for one, recently found it harder to institute a hardly-noticeable 20-second pitch-clock than it was for Congress to pass the 19th amendment allowing women to vote.

Football, like a blood-sucking drug company, denied for years that playing football was related to developing CTE. Even after admitting the dangers, the players themselves aren’t on board with wearing a new safer helmet specifically designed for their protection (catch Antonio Brown Tuesday nights on “Hard Knocks”).

Basketball pundits of the 1970s were skeptical of a three-point line. Today, it is hard to imagine basketball without a three-point line and there’s even talk of a four-point line (four points for one basket seems like too much, but hey, I don’t like change either).

That golf has challenged what fans enjoy about the sport at the Tour Championship is admirable and should be done by more sports more frequently. Staggering the starting positions at the Tour Championship is fun, it’s different, it’s new, and nobody knows if it will work, which is exciting. But that shouldn’t be the end of it.

Golf lags behind other major sports in popularity. The most obvious reason why is that golf just isn’t as accessible as basketball or soccer. If professional golf wishes to increase its popularity then it should be willing to experiment more often. Concerned about distance off the tee? Why not play a tournament at a par-3 course.

Concerned that skill isn’t rewarded enough? Why not play a tournament that only allows players to use five clubs. Why not play a tournament that allows players to throw their ball once per round? Brooks Koepka has just drawn a horrid lie in a fairway bunker but luckily he played baseball in college a just threw it from 140 yards out to two feet. 

Imagine Tiger Woods’ chip at the 16th hole on Sunday of the 2005 Masters was a throw (I can hear the sirens of the Augusta National police force coming to arrest me for even considering the possibility). Would it have been any less riveting?

With the President’s Cup looming in December I am reminded of just how plain golf can be at times. But unlike the entrenched fan bases of team sports, golf patrons are more interested in how a tournament is won rather than who, which should make golf the easiest sport to tweak. Whereas fans of Alabama football practically burned down NCAA headquarters for implementing a playoff, golf simply doesn’t have that level of enthusiasm for its players.

I mean, is there any scenario that would warrant even the most staunch Bryson DeChambeau supporter to sue the PGA Tour like New Orleans Saints fans have done to the NFL?

If there is any chance for sports to be made more enjoyable all avenues should be exhausted in pursuit. In the end, sports is a business. Like any business, sports depend on interest from the consumer, and like most consumers, I don’t know what I want until I see a commercial for it. And so it is up to the powers that be to keep throwing crazy ideas at the wall to see what sticks (I didn’t know that I wanted a ‘quesorito’ and yet I don’t know how I lived without it).

When the Tour Championship kicks off this week the 30 participants will be competing in a tournament they have never played before. The strategy of playing golf has been completely turned on its head forcing players already behind the lead to go lower than they have maybe ever gone.

The old FedEx Cup format severely limited the players who could win, forcing players outside the top-10 to not only win the Tour Championship but to have 20 other scenarios happen to come out on top.

Admittedly, I’ll miss those crazy scenarios and projections. I’ll miss rooting for Justin Rose to miss a putt so Tiger could win. But the new Tour Championship is at the very least fairer, and it is new. Every player in the field has a chance to win, even the players starting at even-par. Now, it’s just golf – no computer projections – which is oddly innovative.