i don't understand the FedExCup

I don't think the PGA Tour understands the concept of playoff. This has to be one the most confusing and unbalanced systems in sports. The FedEx Cup is suppose to crown the best player on the PGA Tour, yet it includes points from NON-PGA Tour events. Last time I checked the Masters is an Augusta National event, the US Open is a USGA event, the British Open is not even in this country, and the PGA Championship is a PGA of America event. PGA Tour events only should count towards the playoff. By including the majors and the WGC events, the top 60 have a huge advantage. And the playoff system itself is stupid. I would like to see it work like this:

1. give points for PGA Tour events only.

2. count the players top 16 events since that's the minimum number of events a fully exempt player has to play.

3. reset the points before the 1st playoff event giving the number 1 seed the most starting points and the 90 seed the least starting points.

4. start the playoffs with 90 not 125, then the same 90 again for the second event. Top 60 in points (not top 60 finishers) make to event 3.  and then top 30 in points for the Tour Championship.

5. don't weigh playoff points too heavily in favor of the first seed and first place finishes. keep the spread between each place equal and make it mathematically possible for anything to happen. The number 1 seed of the FedEx cup should be able to win without a 1st place finish during the playoffs. Conversely, the 90th seed should have to win 1 event with three top 3 finishes to have even the slightest chance.  Or if a guy wins the first 2 events, he shouldn't be mathematically uncatchable.

6. Cut the regular tour event purses by 10-20% and that money to the Tour Championship.

The top 60 kind of have a huge advantage anyway, because, you know, they're the best players in the world. I have been reliably told that no opinion is wrong, but I don't think you're going to get much support for the idea that finishing 16th at the John Deere should get you more points than winning the US Open.

I understand women better than I understand how the Fed Ex Cup works!!!

Sorry, but excluding the 4 majors is nuts. If a player won all four in one year under your system, someone else would be the best player that year? I don't like how the cup works either, but believe me, the four majors are the most competitive events in golf, especially the masters. I think the system should reward winning heavily; the best player in the world isn't the one with the most top 10s, it should be the most wins. Winning and coming close to winning are completely different, and believe me these players don't want to win a lot of top 10s if it means losing an event they could win.

The top players in the world competing in the most prestigious and tough events in golf will always determine the best player. No points system can or should determine excellence.

The FedEx Cup is a joke. It is BEYOND confusing. If you need to have the Golf Channel with Steve Sands standing there updating the scenarios after each hole played it is too confusing. You can get hot win the Tour Championship and win the FedEx Cup, ala Bill Haas. Haas did win early in the year but still. He was hardly even a candidate for player of the year.

The one defense of the FedEx Cup is the previous winners has been decent. Tiger, Vijay, Furyk. Those guys at least had a very good season.

Who said anyone "needs" Steve Sands? At ticker at the bottom of the screen like TGC does to update leader boards during the action would suffice. Whether Bill Haas ever becomes a household name, nobody could argue against him being one of the most clutch performers in 2011. That shot - just wow.

Exactly. The best player has won it in the past, but that's merely a coincidence. Webb Simpson and Luke Donald were better players in 2011 than Bill Haas, but Bill won the Tour Championship / Fed Ex. Two separate things.

While I find the FedEx Cup hard to follow (and I have advanced degrees from MIT and Caltech...), the fact is that there's just no simple system that will create a satisfying end-of-season competition for golf. It needs to be volatile so that it's not wrapped up before it starts, but it needs to reward dominating early. Those are contradictory goals, and the perception of whether the balance was struck will depend strongly on the outcome of the tournament.

Playoffs like they use in other sports don't work because golf is about half an hour of activity stretched over 4 hours for each golfer, and maybe 15% of that activity is interesting to the home viewer. You need a pretty full course of players to generate enough action to fill a telecast that will appeal to more than the hard-core golf fans.

So I'm with Erik on this. It draws golfers to the course to compete, and it seems to produce mostly defensible outcomes. There's no sense getting caught up in fixing its problems because that's an impossible dream.

That's possible, but you'd have to be Luke Donald and finish top-10 in nearly every event.  So if the FedEx Cup is supposed to crown the best performer of the year, who's a better performer for the year:  someone who wins once or twice, or someone who finishes in the top-10 every week, then wins the Tour Championship?

In order to have a chance to win the TC and FedEx Cup, you have to play solid golf all year.  Then you have to play really well in three specific events coming down the stretch, and you have to win at least one of them.  You have to play well throughout the season to get into the playoffs, but it definitely puts a premium on really good play during the playoffs.

That's pretty much the same as any other sport.  Almost half of the NBA makes it into the playoffs, but then you have to finish in the top-half in each of a progression of multi-game series to make the finals.  Baseball is the same, but only a small few of the teams make it in.

And then football.  Look at the NY Giants this year.  They had the worst record of any team to get in the playoffs, and played brilliantly for four games.  Anyone think they should give back the trophy?

This is definitely the best aspect of the FedEx Cup playoffs:  a reason to watch golf after August.  And also why I'd be in favor of the four-event PGA Tour Card playoff during the Fall Finish:  another reason to watch golf, this time into November.  Meet the new faces of next year's tour; watch your old favorites fight to keep their cards.

If anyone should be lobbying against these changes, it's our wives.

Alright, I agree with your point. If this is the way the PGA Tour wants it and fans like it then I guess I can put up with it. Thing is not all sports are like this. Take European football the table never lies. The best team over the course of the season wins. If you get hot for 3 months and then burn out well then you will not win. This truly determines the best team. I would prefer this over the current playoff system where we restart and it made the previous part of the season have less meaning.

A great example of how crappy a year you can have and still win the FedEx Cup is Heath Slocum's 2009 season. He hadn't won since 2005, and had a terrible 2009 regular season. He played all the weakest events --- Valero, John Deere, Milwaukee, and opposite events (events held the same week as WGCs) like Mayakoba and Reno-Tahoe. In spite of the weak schedule, out of 23 events played prior to the FedEx playoffs, he had only two top 32's (not a typo), along with ten missed cuts. He somehow squeaked into the playoffs --- he was #124 out of 125. But he won the first playoff event, and jumped to #3. He missed the cut at the second playoff event, and finished T38 in the third (which had a field of 69 and no cut), but was still 5th overall going into the Tour Championship, which meant a win there would guarantee him the Cup, no matter what anyone else did, and even finishing 3rd in the TC would still win him the FedEx Cup if the four guys ahead of him had a bad week. He didn't win, but the point is that he could have, after just one good performance in the whole year prior to the TC. If I'm not mistaken, the point distributions for the FedEx Cup have not changed since then.

The problem with this sort of solution, at least in the eyes of some, is that it leads to the possibility that the Cup is locked with a substantial number of events to play. It's by design that most playoffs don't just choose the team that had the best overall performance for the whole season.

And really, that's not the purpose of the FedEx Cup either. We have the OWGR and other ranking systems. The FedEx cup is just there to manufacture some drama at the end of the season (and bribe the big names to keep coming out).

Sigh.  I wish more people thought like you.  I ignore the FedEx thing, basically.  After the PGA Championship I watch the Ryder or President's Cup and that's it.  Hyperplayoffism has turned me off all team sports.

That is the purpose.

I would like to see them narrow it down to a "Sweet 16" throw out the points and then do match play over the last four days. Single elimination for $10M would create some drama and eliminate the need for all the tiresome "if Webb finishes 3rd and Luke finishes 8th or worse" talk we get subjected to over the final weekend.

I agree. I like the idea of the playoffs and how it can setup some really exciting golf. However I think it would be a lot better if the fans had some idea of what was happening with the points system and who can win or place where??? See I am already confused. When you look at the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA etc...... you know who is in the playoffs and who has to do what to win. When it comes to the PGA playoffs, their points systems has even the best Golf Channel hosts scratching their heads. With the elimination of Q-school and moving forward with a playoff system either to win the Fedex or keep you card, it needs to be "fan friendly" and easier to follow so the general fans can get on board and really enjoy it, because it could be great.