Update: Reset Cup As A Stroke Play
/Believe it or not, Doug Ferguson has filed yet another rave review for the FedExCup and it includes a nice mention of all the fawning (well, rear-end-kissing) texts Tim Finchem received for the BMW Championship leaderboard (any follow-up texts today congratulating him on a 2.5 rating that would indeed edge out a poker championship on ESPN).
Thankfully, Randall Mell points out this year's ridiculous oddity and the overall awkward nature of the cup: Louis Oosthuizen can finish second this week and win the Reset Cup without winning any playoff tournaments.
Now, in an alternate universe where the bar is a bit higher than merely celebrating a gathering of stars no matter how silly the competition, we look for ways to actually make this competition appealing to a wider audience.
Gary Van Sickle's suggestion for an aggregate FedExCup continues to appeal despite one (not deadly) flaw: season-long points don't mean much besides getting you in the playoffs. However, the issue of trying to reward good play during the regular season could be remedied and that's not important right now. (It's easy to visualize a stroke-based system that rewards the top players and penalizes the bottom feeders.)
Seeing as how we are through three playoff stages with only the Tour Championship at East Lake next week, Jim McCabe updates us on the leaderboard for those who have played all three playoff events (Dufner and Garcia therefore are DQ'd).
Here are the top 10 (McCabe lists more and has more plus some other good playoff notes worth checking out):
• Rory McIlroy, 41 under
• Dustin Johnson, 36 under
• Tiger Woods, 34 under
• Louis Oosthuizen, 34 under
• Phil Mickelson, 31 under
• Lee Westwood, 31 under
• Brandt Snedeker, 25 under
• Ryan Moore, 24 under
• Adam Scott, 24 under
• Nick Watney, 19 under
How would this not be a more interesting race to follow at East Lake along with the Tour Championship itself? Two tournaments going at once and every fan can understand scores to par. And as Van Sickle has proposed, perhaps a five-stroke credit for winning a playoff event to, gulp, incentivize the boys.
More important, would this be fan friendly?
When the PGA Tour's dynamic video scoreboards take a break from showing ads or telling us who the host professional is, they could easily tell us where the tournament and FedExCup stand. Right? And wouldn't the entire affair have more credibility with fans if they could actually understand what is going on? Or is the fan that low on the list of the insulated world of the PGA Tour that they simply do not care about that aspect of the Reset Cup?
