Rory McIlroy is back this week, having not dropped a single spot in the FedEx Cup standings, his absence in the first playoff event having caused some consternation as the PGA Tour embarks on a new format this year for the Tour Championship.
Justin Rose won the FedEx St. Jude over J.J. Spaun, moving from 25th to eighth in the points. Spaun moved from eighth to third, 100 points behind McIlroy. They're all still looking way up at Scottie Scheffler, who holds a 2,012-point lead over McIlroy.
McIlroy had long ago suggested that he would skip the FedEx St. Jude in Memphis, but that didn’t stop many—including fellow players—from wondering if this loophole is good for the PGA Tour and if something needs to be done to close it.
While the belief here is that McIlroy is an outlier in this case—he is among the few willing to skip a $20 million no-cut event and knows it wasn’t going to hurt him in any significant way—the Masters champion’s absence from the first of three FedEx Cup playoff events does raise a concern that dates to the inception of the system in 2007.
The playoffs are not playoffs.
Since the beginning, the season-ending series of tournaments has been plagued by trying to marry the idea of crowning a season-long champion while also offering up a compelling playoff structure—one that has never had enough risk.
Balancing the two has proved elusive. A season-long race obviously can’t have the top players eliminated. But a playoff system sees the top teams in other sports eliminated all the time. It’s part of the peril, part of the drama, and would have made the weekend at the FedEx even more compelling.
The tournament started with 70 players after the final regular-season event. The idea was to whittle the field to 50 for this week’s BMW Championship. But all of the points accumulated during the season carry over. Even though the first two playoff events see a quadruple-points multiplier (2,000 for the winner instead of 500 and on down), there were just five players who moved into the top 50 for this week, which is more than typical.
But what if the top 50 in the tournament proper were the only ones to advance?
A player such as Shane Lowry, who is 23rd in FedEx Cup points and a good bet to make next week’s Tour Championship, would be looking at going home. He tied for 59th in Memphis. Harsh? Maybe, but that’s what playoffs are all about, and asking players to beat just 20 of their peers in order to advance at least puts some danger into teeing it up. And if you choose to skip or are injured, you don’t advance.
Not to pick on Lowry, but had he needed to finish among the top 50 on Sunday, perhaps his approach would have been different. Same for McIlroy last year in Memphis, where he tied for 68th and beat one player. Both knew they were advancing. The need to sweat out a tournament finish in boiling Memphis was not a concern.
This idea is not original. Many have proposed it in recent times as it has become apparent that the need to accumulate points through the BMW becomes moot once all the players get to Atlanta. The Tour has smartly ditched the starting strokes format that began in 2019 and gone to a single tournament winner-take-all format.
There is nothing wrong with that, really. The Tour has shifted some of the FedEx Cup bonus money to better take care of the season-long best players.
But if you want true playoffs, have the top 50 scores advance to the BMW, and then the top 30 from there, starting over each week. If there are ties, play off.
Do these tournaments risk losing some star players? Sure, but knowing the stakes, it would put so much more emphasis on all players being on their game. (And let’s be honest: Scottie Scheffler has not finished outside of the top 50 in the last two years and outside of the top 30 just twice. Can we not expect he’s going to advance?)
When the Tour announced in May that it was changing the Tour Championship format, it was also disclosed that this was a bridge year and the other changes could be forthcoming. It appears that the players—who ultimately approve—are not in favor of the various match play scenarios that have been floated.
So this is an easy idea that keeps the same general concept in place and allows a regular stroke-play tournament to decide the outcome.
The major championships—three of which use the top 30 in final FedEx Cup points to help determine fields—might want to adjust their criteria to the end of the regular season to better reflect a season-long achievement. But that seems worth a change in order to try and get this right.
It should also be noted that the original, overriding reason for having a playoff series was to bring the top players together at the end of the season. Prior to the FedEx Cup, the season sort of sputtered along with little interest following the PGA Championship. The Tour Championship was in November, simply for the top 30 money winners to that point. Some players skipped it.
This is better. Way better. But it’s not as good as it could be and it is often ridiculed. Turn it into a true playoff and see what happens.
LIV and the OWGR quest
Since submitting its application for Official World Golf Ranking accreditation on June 30, neither LIV Golf nor the OWGR has offered any kind of hints as to what the bid entails, and what changes the league is proposing that would help it be approved.
There is, of course, plenty of speculation. LIV Golf appears poised after this week’s final individual event to relegate the players who finish outside of the top 48 in the season-long points race. That was one of the areas the OWGR addressed when it publicly denied LIV’s initial application in October of 2023.
Another was the lack of field variance—LIV’s schedule is almost entirely the same 54 players unless there is an injury. And it also raised some concerns about the team format.
Whether or not LIV Golf adds teams, players, qualifiers or anything to change up the system still remains to be seen.
But LIV’s Jon Rahm offered some hints last week, although he was quick to point out it was simply his own opinion.
“I think the way I see it, at least right now, there’s a process to hopefully enter those world ranking points and at least get our foot in the door, and then once we’re allowed, we can see what changes can be made to earn as many as possible, keeping the integrity of what LIV Golf is about,” Rahm said in advance of the LIV Chicago event.
“Examples of that would be, let’s say with whatever we’re doing currently we get 20 points (to the winner of the tournament). If you add a fourth round, you go to 25. Is that worth it, is that not worth it? If you add a cut, things like that. Right now with as little players as we have, I don’t see a cut working very well, and with the teams I think it would be a little odd.”
Those are interesting observations, whether Rahm knows anything about the process or not.
First, those associated with the OWGR have said that 54 holes is not an issue that can’t be overcome. What is unclear is if there would be a points reduction if a tournament is not 72 holes or if LIV would simply get full points for a 54-hole event. The OWGR does accredit three 54-hole tours, but they are extremely low-level developmental tours.
The cut issue is also interesting because while that comes up often as some sort of flaw, the OWGR last year began accounting for it by not awarding points to the bottom 15% of a non-cut field (save for playoff events or a Tour Championship.) So, for example, the bottom 15% at the Travelers Championship did not get world ranking points. Same for the Truist Championship and Pebble Beach.
“But if the league were to expand and let's say you go to 15 teams, you have 60 players, now you can actually possibly make something work,” Rahm said.
He was speaking in terms of a cut, but it does also open up other possibilities such a weekly qualifier or a, maybe, a team that qualifies via the Asian Tour. That would give LIV fields some variance from week to week and might also help spark a bit more interest in the Asian Tour.
“There’s many possibilities that I can think of,” Rahm said. “By the way, this is completely hypothetical because I haven’t spoken to anybody about it, but there’s things we could do I think to add more world rankings points if we need it, and I’m sure there’s more that I can’t think of that the folks at OWGR and maybe Scott (O’Neil, LIV Golf’s CEO) or the front of the LIV office can probably tell us about to give us a little bit more of strength of field.”
The Bubble Watch
This is a big week on the PGA Tour and LIV Golf League for several players.
PGA Tour: The top 30 following the BMW Championship advance to the Tour Championship in Atlanta, and that is big for anyone who might not be exempt in next year’s three majors (Masters, U.S. Open, British Open) that use the final standings to give an exemption.
It also means competing for the FedEx Cup title. Only the 30 who make it to the Tour Championship get to play for that trophy, which will come with a $10 million bonus. The total bonus pool in Atlanta is $40 million.
Perhaps the biggest name outside of the top 50 is Xander Schauffele. A year after winning two major championships, Schauffele has struggled to find the same form and battled an early-season injury that put him behind.
Although he posted top 10s at the Scottish Open and the Open, his tie for 22nd in Memphis saw him drop a spot in the standings to 43rd. He needs a strong week at Caves Valley to advance, as he has done every year dating to his rookie-of-the-year season in 2017.
LIV Golf: For the first time, the league is saying that anyone in what’s called the drop zone, including captains, will be forced out of the league in 2026.
That means Ian Poulter, a tri-captain along with Henrik Stenson and Lee Westwood, is in danger of losing a place in the league after this week’s last individual event in Indianapolis.
Poulter is 52nd in points but just 1.02 points behind Stenson—who is 48th. You have to finish among the top 24 to earn any points with only two points going to a finish of 20th place with just 1 point for 21 to 24. Poulter has earned points in just one event, when he tied for 13th in Korea.
Wild card player Chieh-Po Lee moved up with a tie for 13th to 45th position. But Mito Pereira only moved into 49th with his tie for 13th. He is followed by Andy Ogletree, Louis Masaveu (who played as a reserve), Poulter, Yubin Jang, Anthony Kim and Frederik Kjettrup.
Only points leader Joaquin Niemann and Jon Rahm, who tied for second in Chicago, have an opportunity to win the individual title that went to Rahm last year. It is somewhat remarkable that the two-time major champion has a chance, as he has not won this year while Niemann has won five times. Niemann, as the points leader or as the highest finisher not otherwise exempt, will earn a spot in next year’s U.S. Open.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rory McIlroy’s Return Shows How the FedEx Cup Playoffs Are Still Missing the Mark.