Why good solutions for the Tour Championship could prove difficult

A few weeks ago, multiple sources including SI.com and CBS Sports, indicated the PGA Tour is considering changes to the Tour Championship, and by extension, the FedEx Cup.

You can include me as someone else dissatisfied with the current “staggered start” format. Looking at the results of the 2024 event, Scottie Scheffler finished at -30, Collin Morikawa at -26, and Sahith Theegala at -24. You might think host East Lake played super easy or the PGA Tour’s setup was not a sufficient challenge. Those three players, however, started the event at -10, -4 and -3, respectively.

If you look up year-by-year results of the Tour Championship since 2019, you usually can find the winner of the event (and the FedEx Cup) and the player with the lowest gross score. Yes, many times, two different players – a Net winner and a Gross winner … in a PGA Tour event!

The premise behind the “staggered start” makes some sense. When started, the logic was the winner of the Tour Championship and the winner of the FedEx Cup – prizes awarded simultaneously – are not necessarily the same player.

Looking back farther, from 2007-2018, the results of the Tour Championship awarded FedEx Cup points, those were added to previous totals, and, after awarding the Tour Championship trophy, the season-long FedEx Cup winner was announced and the prize awarded.

Tiger Woods won the Tour Championship in 2018 but not the FedEx Cup

For example, Tiger Woods won the 2018 Tour Championship, but Justin Rose won the 2018 FedEx Cup. The Tour also had two winners in 2008, 2009, and 2017. In 2016 Rory McIlroy won both.

A positive is the “staggered start” allows players, fans, and commentators to more easily keep track of where things stand. It also allows for one person to be the winner at the end of the week.

Is there really a satisfactory answer? Let us explore ideas and weigh the pros and cons.

Go back to the 2007-2018 days and accept the possibility of having two winners. Here, the Tour will rely heavily upon the announcers and video boards around the course to keep up to date on the standings. If the Tour were to reinstate the stipulation that anyone in the top five who wins at East Lake wins the FedEx Cup also, that could help reduce dual winners.

The winner of the final stage does not necessarily win the Tour De France.

Keep the current format. Here the path to the Winner’s Circle is clearly understood but as mentioned earlier, there is an awkward net or handicap component everyone must overcome.

30-player match play. The top two players would have a first-round bye and using the points as the seeds allows everyone to better understand the standings. On the plus side, the last two players duel it out on Sunday to determine the winner. The cons are more players playing on Thursday and Friday when viewership is lower and as few as two players playing on the weekend. Other cons are that matches rarely do not go all eighteen holes and the possibility that top seeds could lose in early rounds, reducing interest.

30-player medal-match play. The format is the same except each match is an 18-hole stroke play round with the best score being the one who advances. The pro here is that matches will at least make it to the last hole, but the cons are that scores could be lopsided and that the last hole is not competitive. There is also the same con as before where a top seed could lose in an early round.

I do not see a clever way to balance the converging interests in the event. From a competitive standpoint, the match play idea has merit, but I would create a home-course advantage to the higher seed to reward prior standings a bit more. The semifinals and finals could be at East Lake.

Using 2024 as a test run, 1 seed Scottie Scheffler and 2 seed Xander Schauffele would have first round byes. 30 seed Justin Thomas would go to 3 seed Hideki Matsuyama’s home course in Japan (unless he has a secondary home in the US), 17 seed Viktor Hovland would travel to South Korea to play 16 seed Byeong Hun An, with the winner then traveling to Dallas to play Scottie Scheffler.

Each match could theoretically be played anywhere really, not just at any specific home course.

If done correctly, it could bring us back to the days of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf. Do I expect this to be considered? Of course not.

That would be a nightmare for travel schedules and to generate reasonable television, all over a single week (spread it over two weeks … or more?), but it does give the advantage to those who earn it.

Regardless of what the folks in Ponte Vedra Beach decide, there will be positives and negatives over whatever the eventual answer is.