Bill Haas Didn't Know He Won The FedExCup When He Won The FedExCup

It's hard to imagine that Bill Haas was unaware that he won the $10 million FedExCup. After all, have you seen the PGA Tour's electronic scoreboards? You can get FedExCup standings, but apparently in September when it matters, information was tough to come by! (Maybe not surprising since you may recall I've written about how tough it is to get scores in between the ads, player info and other stuff on the video boards.)

The final round highlights include Haas' brilliant playoff recovery shot from the 17th hole lake but do not capture the bizarre moment Haas talked about in his post round press conference.

Q. Could you clarify when you actually did find out that you had not only won the $1.44 but the 10 mill? And did you fall out of your chair?

BILL HAAS: Well, we went up and did some TV interviews up in the grandstands there on 18 and both trophies were there and there was no other player, (laughter), so I kind of assumed and I looked at my wife and she was there, and she nodded her head. So that was when I realized.

I saw Tim Finchem, I said, I didn't know I had won this, and he was like, congratulations, you won both. That's what he said, both are for you.

The scribblers in attendance weren't buying his claim.

Q. Two-part question: How is it possible that you didn't know you were playing for $10 million?

BILL HAAS: Well, I knew I was playing for it, but even winning it --

Q. No, that the playoff was for the -- when you teed off in the playoff, you did not know you were playing for the FedExCup title and the $10 million?

BILL HAAS: Uh-uh.

Q. How is that possible?

BILL HAAS: I didn't ask, and nobody told me and nobody --

LAURA HILL: Bill, come on now.

BILL HAAS: Well, I knew if I won, that was the only way I could win the FedExCup. If I finished second, I knew I couldn't win the FedExCup. So in theory I knew I was playing for it. I'm not going to sit there and say, well, it's not a million on the line here, there's $11 million, let's put some more pressure on it, because it's not worth it. It's not worth that stress. I was just trying to win that golf tournament. And actually even more than that, I was trying to hit good shots in the moment, and even though I did it some of the time, I still was trying to stay not thinking about what's going to happen if this doesn't come off. I was just trying to hit each shot, and now it just fell that way. It's awesome.

Q. The second question is if you did know you were playing for the $10 million in the playoff, would there have been more pressure?

BILL HAAS: I don't know, because like you said, I knew $11 million was on the line somehow, whether Luke Donald won it or Webb Simpson won it or I won it, it was there, so that was in my head. When I was putting for that 4-footer to win, it was just to win the TOUR Championship, knowing that was all I could do.

The highlights, including the shot on 17 and the final putt:

Oh No! The Whiteboard Is Out And It's Only Friday!

I have to say, the new Steve Sands-helmed white board and graphics center might make a bad situation even worse. And it's only Friday of the Tour Championship. Click to enlarge at your peril:

Finchem Goes Into Hard Sell Mode On FedExCup; Slips In Rare Aviation Metaphor

You had to think all of these years flying on Air Tim I or II would have led to more aeronautical metaphors, but today's was the first I've come across in several years of agonizing through Tim Finchem press conference transcripts.

From East Lake and sandwiched in between some awards announcements:

About this year, I think it's been a kind of long, grueling year from the standpoint of workload. It's been a tremendously rewarding year from the standpoint of first watching so many good young players succeed and positioning the Tour for the next ten years. And as I said a couple weeks ago in Boston, we're delighted with our new television agreements. It really gives us a long runway.

Yes, it is indeed a long runway. You could take off, land and take off (again) in your Citation on this runway.

These next comments on parity were the primary takeaway remarks for wire stories in search of deep meaning from today's presser.

And then the other thing I'd say about the competition, and I don't know exactly how to articulate this, but clearly we've gone very quickly from a point in time when we were very much a sport that was -- had a dominant player to all the way to the other end of the spectrum, not part way, but all the way to the other end of the spectrum. We had a player on the Player Advisory Council on some issue we were talking about in New York saying we're at a point of total parity. Anybody out here can win any given time. And it occurred to me that that's true, and so far the fans seem to really like it, and it'll be interesting to see what develops in that regard going forward.

Key words: so far.

Our ratings are up this year as a result of that interest, and I think that interest triggered a lot of what was very positive in our television negotiations. On both fronts, television and the caliber of our competition, we're very, very pleased as we come to the end of the FedExCup.

That's because they hit rock bottom last year!

Alright, strap in, here comes the FedExCup pitch.

Then toward the end of the -- just before the Playoffs, we had a really good upsurge in the quality of the field at Wyndham with Harrington and Els and others playing, which is another indicative of how strongly players feel about the importance of the Playoffs in and of themselves and the FedExCup overall.

You know, if you go back in golf and look at any tournament, go back to Tom Morris, however far you want to go back, there is a graduation of stature of any event that rides with the extent to which players prioritize that event.

Whoa there. Did Old Tom Morris just get lumped into a FedExCup/quality of field discussion? Did he ever play the Wyndham to enhance his chances of making it to Cog Hill before the second reshuffle?

And then perhaps most importantly is measuring and recognizing the reaction of the fans to what the FedExCup is. We've had an increase in overall awareness every year, our attendance, our overall gross attendance has been up with one exception the last three years. We attribute the fact that our overall ratings are up this year to the fact that, especially in an era of parity, perhaps, fans are more interested in figuring out who these guys are, spending more time with the telecast and watching them proceed through the FedExCup competition. And so the number of minutes on average that our fans spend with the telecast this year was up nicely.

Or maybe it's just been hot and rainy outside?

Nice adjustment here by the transcript editors. Cume looks so much better than the old transcript spelling:

In addition, our overall cume viewership, 84 million Americans watched us more than ten weeks, 146 million Americans have watched us some. We continue to be on just an event to event basis second only to the NFL in terms of the total audience that's with us in a particular event up against any other sport on average. These are all trends that are really important to the health of our sponsorship, but they emanate from the interest that the fans have.

They just can't get enough of the algorithms?

He did leave a bit of an opening for a change to the end of the FedExCup, with the groundwork laid to blame television for a tweak to have the final days (or day) as a true playoff:

But I do think there's an argument for continuity and letting people settle in with what's happening. It's particularly -- it's a challenge for television to cover when you have two different competitions going on, particularly like last year here where you had a lot of different stories, and the first three weeks in the Playoffs you've got a lot of different stories with the cut line, and then you've got stories at the top. I think it's great television, and I think our partners are doing a really good job. It's a challenge, but I think they've really stepped up and really hit on it now, and I think it's captivating for our fans, and it's good.