Spieth, Morikawa Lead FedEx Cup as Convoluted Playoffs Begin
Jordan Spieth and Collin Morikawa are currently on top of the FedEx Cup points standings. However, some have suggested there’s no sense in worrying about FedEx points because they all get thrown out in two weeks anyway. What’s amazing is all that good work they both did during the season can be obliterated by anyone in the top 125 or top 70 who has a victory in the last two events.
This is how it could happen.
Right now, the points from the regular season carry over to the playoffs. The points are quadrupled for the winner of the next two tournaments, the Northern Trust and the BMW Championship. They are also increased for all places in the tournaments, but excessively for the top spots compared to lower finishes.
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Morikawa currently has 2,171 points. Spieth has 2,139. Now, what’s important this week is the winner of the Northern Trust gets 2000 points.
The last place in points is Chesson Hadley, No 125, with 440. If he wins the Northern Trust, he’s at 2,440 points. If Morikawa finishes 20th at Northern Trust, he gets 180 points, putting him at 2,351 points. Never mind where everybody else falls. Whether that’s fair or not is up to the PGA Tour to decide. For now, they believe it is.
There’s two weeks of this kind of thing that’s going to happen. It could be great for some and catastrophic, monetarily speaking, for others.
What does matter though, is where players finish after the next two weeks, not in points, but in placement.
Here’s why:
The Northern Trust has a cut from 125 to top 65 players and ties for the weekend. So, all who miss the cut also miss out on some good points to add to their grand total. Just remember, with this points stuff, a golfer could miss the cut at the Northern Trust and still advance to the BMW, so long as he is in the top 70 in points.
Then, when the Tour Championship starts, just to refresh your brain, which has been through a lot in the last 12 to 18 months, only the top 30 in points get to play. And all the previous points get thrown out. The guy with the most points starts the Tour Championship with a score of 10-under par before he hits a shot. Then the rest of the 30 get lower scores to start, down to even par, which is what players in 26th-30th place receive.
Hopefully, we can avoid what happened last year when Xander Schauffele actually had the lowest four-round score but didn’t win the FedEx Cup because of the scores assigned to all the players at the start of the week. In other words, after 15 years, there are still glitches in all of this, but at least Steve Sands of Golf Channel doesn’t have to go crazy with his white board trying to keep track of ever-changing points on Sunday of the Tour Championship.
I don’t know how many times the FedEx points program has changed, but I’m sure it’s at least five in 15 years. The classic change was after Vijay Singh won the FedEx Cup before the end of the playoffs. All he had to do was play any kind of golf, good, bad, indifferent, for four days in Atlanta, and the cup was his. Obviously that had to change, and it did.
Then there were several years where one golfer won the FedEx Cup and another won the Tour Championship. That happened with Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele in 2017 and with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in 2009. The current system, whatever else we may say about it, at least gives us one winner of both the FedEx Cup and the Tour Championship at the end of the season.