ATLANTA — Should he ever aspire to climb down from the peak of professional golf and pursue a career of meager pay and low esteem, Patrick Cantlay would make a fine sports columnist.
He showed that earlier this week at East Lake when asked about the very format he rode to a FedEx Cup title and a $15 million payday a year ago.
“I think there’s got to be a better system, although frankly I don’t know what that better system is,” he said. Long on criticism and short on solutions — the hallmark of the columnist. Someone get that man a press pass, a beat-up laptop and a touch of social awkwardness, and he’ll fit in nicely.
There’s a lot of such vague discontent with the way the PGA Tour has chosen to warp the definition of “playoff” and smother its top-tier members in wealth at season’s end. At 15, the FedEx Cup has gone through more than its share of adolescent changes, the golf equivalent of the zits and the strange, unpleasant odors.
They’ve closed out some years with dual trophy presentations — one to a season-long points winner and one to the tournament winner of the Tour Championship. “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to have two winners show up on the green,” said Xander Schauffele, who took part in one such split-personality finale in 2017.
Wrong. It was a clumsy, bad look.
And trying to follow the hole-by-hole changes in FedEx Cup points over the course of the Tour Championship was more effort than any golf fan should have to invest.
For these past four Tour Championships, they eliminated the need for an advanced math degree and allowed any first-grader to follow. Points leaders earn a head start in the final tournament — No. 1 in points begins the event at 10 under, No. 2 at 8 under, No. 3 at 7 under and so forth down the 30-man field — with low net score Sunday taking the title.
Starting a championship event on such uneven ground is unlike anything else in sport, and that has caused no shortage of disorientation.
“We’re not football, we’re not basketball, we’re not baseball,” Max Homa said after his Friday round. “Just because the Patriots are undefeated, do we need to then start them with a two-touchdown lead? Because it feels like that year they should have won the Super Bowl (2008), they didn’t.
“But golf is different, and I don’t think this is awful.”
“Not awful” is hardly a ringing endorsement of your crowning event.
Actually it has been much better than that. Not a playoff in any conventional meaning of the word, but really not bad at all. Start with the premise that there may never be one true way to stoke interest in golf after the majors or to perfectly balance rewarding a player for a season of excellence while also building drama into the final week. But those who don’t allow the quest for perfect to get in the way of the pretty good might admit that the current system has produced worthy, legitimate champions.
Hey, just because it’s weird doesn’t make it automatically bad. See sushi and Joaquin Phoenix.
And looking atop the leaderboard going into Sunday’s closing arguments of this Tour Championship, the potential is there for the right kind of “playoff” champion.
The leaders coming out of Saturday’s weather-shortened third round were the same as at the start of the day, world’s No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 5 Xander Schauffele. When play was stopped by the second weather delay of the day, Scheffler was on top at an adjusted 19 under, with Schauffele one back, through 12 holes.
You got the reigning Masters champ vs. the reigning Olympic gold medalist. Seven PGA Tour victories between them. Guys whose talents are about as similar as their names.
After that, the 2022 credentials of the contenders get a little murkier, but Sunday at the Tour Championship has had a way of sorting that out.
In each of the previous three years, the staggered scoring hasn’t gotten in the way of identifying a player no one would be ashamed to call a champion. A quick look:
2019 — Starting the week five shots back of points leader Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy went 13 under for the week and won by four strokes. A masterful performance culminated by a Sunday 66 for a three-time winner (including the Players Championship) that season.
2020 — No. 1 in the world and No. 1 in points standings, Dustin Johnson nursed the advantage he had coming into the Tour Championship and won by three over Thomas and Schauffele. Johnson won three times during that COVID-19 constricted season, and would go on to win the rare November Masters a few months later.
2021 — For the second consecutive year, the No. 1 seed prevailed, Cantlay beating then No. 1 in the world Jon Rahm by a stroke. It was the fourth win of his breakout season, including victories at the Memorial and the final two playoff events. Even the Braves didn’t have a better finish than that.
In all three cases, winning the Tour Championship/FedEx Cup was the final argument for McIlroy, Johnson and Cantlay each winning the Jack Nicklaus Player of the Year Award. Flukes or accidents don’t win anything named after Nicklaus.
If there’s a better way to do this Tour Championship thing, I haven’t found it. But it has worked well enough to supply a decent week’s amusement. Odds are it will work out that way again Sunday.
