Report: Moribund PGA Tour "Playoffs" To (Mercifully) End Monday

2020 has been positive in one very small sense: it has spawned some spectacular, even unprecedented “playoff” naps. We’re talking circa 2012, 2014 level melatonin injections after mere minutes of tuning into the PGA Tour’s three season-ending non-thrill rides.

While I enjoyed some drool-inducers during Olympia Fields week, nothing has come close to Sunday’s third round siesta extraordinaire.

You know the kind: wake up to a golf telecast with no idea what day it is, what year it is, or what tournament is making that background noise.

The affairs at East Lake have been made worse by a random confluence of factors. There is the soul-crushing sight of watching the Johnson brothers reading greens, Feherty buttoning up in fear of a 904 party-pooper questioning his jokes, and the traditionally energy-light venue which somehow feels even more moribund than usual. I’m almost pining for the East Lake Cup college mascots to make a cameo. Almost.

Juxtapose this stagnant $45 million snoozer against compelling NBA games, NBC’s impressive Kentucky Derby coverage (where no controversy was ignored), and Sunday’s bizarro Djokovic U.S. Open antics, and the PGA Tour’s Super Bowl seems more unimaginably dull than normal.

Good news: just one more day in the 2019-20 season remains until players regroup from the playoff stress and assorted hard-contact injuries to start all over again next Thursday in Napa.

Until then, Dustin Johnson seems primed to add $15 million to his bank account on the back of an impressive fourth-straight week holding a 54-hole lead. He leads by five. But it’s such a joyless form of golf to watch that goes beyond on the, uh, placid demeanor of the leader. Risk and reward is almost non-existent. The players rarely smile or seem remotely happy to be there. The NBC telecast looks like a show with a slashed budget and sounds like a live infomercial. A far cry from the aforementioned big-time events where the storytelling and honesty lures the viewer in. But, this is what the players and Ponte Vedra brass demand no matter how synthetic and dull.

So if your Labor Day schedule is light, then 4 1/2 hours of NBC coverage begins at 1 pm ET. And if you’re wondering, Xander Schauffele would be leading a way more compelling final round setup if this was not a net championship.

But I doubt you were wondering.