WTF Declared A Rousing Success...With Tweaks To Come

Seven ResetCups later they're still "tweaking" the FedExCup with more to come. Which is fine since it's a silly points race where rich guys just get richer.

But the Web.com Tour Finals (WTF) is about someone's livelihood, and apparently when they ran the models at Camp Ponte Vedra, no one bothered to notice that it's kind of impossible to track an event with no points and no scores impacting the outcome. Instead, it's about money lists and waiting for those to be computed. It wasn't interesting in the old Nationwide Tour championship and never will be.

The house account by Jeff Shain goes 389 words before the "tweak" word appears, a stable of the FedExCup jargon collection. And after reading it, I'm still not sure who won what exactly but we've been assured it was exciting and interesting.

Rex Hoggard also declares the WTF a hit in this story, and files this note on players pointing out the absurdity of the system.

Jamie Lovemark, for example, finished 12th in regular-season earnings on the secondary circuit to secure his card but hasn’t finished better than 32nd in the Finals and is currently 44th, out of 50, on the priority rankings.

“It is hard to see guys who I beat on the regular-season money list, by a good amount, pass me with one decent finish,” said Lovemark, who is currently alone in fifth place at TPC Sawgrass. “It means I have to have a good finish. But you kind of feel like you should have a little more weight for the top 25 guys (regular-season money winners), but I’m sure that will probably be tinkered with in the future just like we did with the FedEx Cup.”

Again and again and again!

Not to be outdone, Randall Mell also analyzes what's wrong from the player point of view and it seems the playoffs pretty much nullified the dreaded "body of work" from the regular season events.

In the past, Web.com Tour and Q-School card winners alternated priority ranking positions. The Web.com Tour’s leading money winner received the highest priority ranking among the 50 card winners in a category all his own. The Q-School winner got the next highest ranking. Q-School and Web.com Tour card winners alternated priority ranking positions all the way through the 50 card winners.

“The whole ranking thing now, I think they dropped the ball on that a little bit,” said Chesson Hadley, who otherwise raves about the Finals as a better way than Q-School.

Hadley and other Web.com Tour players competing this week are pushing for the Web.com Tour regular season to somehow be more favorably rewarded in the Finals. Hadley and others don’t like the idea that a player who battled all year long to claim second on the Web.com Tour regular-season money list could end up No. 49 or No. 50 on the priority ranking list when the Finals are over.

Not to worry, after the four fall events we'll have a priority re-shuffle and it'll all be pointless by then anyway.