"We are talking about a 37-week accomplishment."
/I'm sure the PGA Tour's Ric Clarson means well, but everytime he talks about the FedEx Cup, he gives you new reasons to not like it.
From Steve Elling in the Orlando Sentinel, writing about the 5-year exemption that goes with winning the FedEx Cup:
Forget the $10 million bonus.Okay, you're saying, he's drinking the Kool-Aid, no news flash there. Then Elling drops this:
That's not chicken feed, but it's not all the winner of the forthcoming FedEx Cup will earn. The PGA Tour has added a potentially more valuable carrot -- a five-year playing exemption to the FedEx winner, matching the reward accorded winners of golf's vaunted major championships.
Sounds like heresy, huh? Then listen to this.
"Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel, they all had a significant one-week accomplishment," tour official Ric Clarson said of three recent, and mostly obscure, major winners. "That's on the resume for the rest of their life, but we are talking about a 37-week accomplishment. I'd say this trumps that.
"We are not saying the FedEx Cup is better than winning a major, but it's a totally different measurement."
As if the exemption isn't enough to stir conversation, Clarson said that based on computer models run by the tour, it is possible that a player could win the FedEx Cup race without winning any of the four so-called playoff events in August and September.
Which again is a reminder that these "playoffs" will be the most confusing in the history of sports, as viewers wait anxiously after the rounds for the points standings to be spit out of the computer. A true playoff would simply eliminate people each week in the build up to the Tour Championship.
Elling concludes:
Not to pick on the guy, but in theory, a player like David Duval could get hot for four weeks, win the FedEx bonus and then fall off the face of the earth, just like he did after winning the 2001 British Open. Yet his exemption would cement a spot for him on tour.
Oh, you can pick on him.
