Assessing the FedEx Cup Playoffs On the Eve Of Its 20th Year

This week marks the 20th edition of the FedEx Cup playoffs, an era nearly as old as each of the last three PGA Tour winners.

That should be enough of a sample size to make some definitive determinations about the concept – and yet, ask anyone from the most diehard golf fans to the casuals and you’ll likely hear answers which range from “well below perfect” to “better than nothing.”

The inherent problem here has always been – and probably always will be – the fact that golf’s postseason lacks the importance of those in other sports. Whether it’s football, baseball, basketball or hockey, the playoffs lead to a Holy Grail at the conclusion, a singular champion crowned as the best of that current season.

In golf, there are these things called major championships which dwarf postseason results or anything else.

As such, it’s easy to write off the FedEx Cup as some contrived gimmick without any real relevance, however I’ve always believed that in order to properly assess the current state of the playoffs, we should first review the barren landscape which preceded it.

In 2006, the final year before it began, the Tour Championship was held from Nov. 2-5 – smack in the midst of Week 9 of the NFL season. Neither Tiger Woods nor Phil Mickelson – the PGA Tour’s two biggest drawing cards at the time – made the trip to East Lake that week. As memory serves, neither offered an explanation, though it’s fair to reason that they were doing the same thing everyone else was that weekend – watching football.

As I’ve maintained in the two decades since, whatever complaints you have about the format or other details of the FedEx Cup, it’s impossible to argue that the previous iteration of the season finale was better than the current version.

And sure, there have been plenty of advancements along the way.

In the third year of the playoffs, Woods won the FedEx Cup and Mickelson claimed the Tour Championship, leading to awkward photos of each holding a trophy on a day when they both kinda, sorta won. Eight years later, Justin Thomas took the FedEx Cup, then in his winner’s press conference bemoaned not winning the Tour Championship that day, as well.

Criticize the current scenario if you will, but the PGA Tour has removed that bit of clumsiness.

The early years also featured Steve Sands of NBC Sports doing advanced arithmetic on a whiteboard in front of a national television audience. If you don’t remember this, I can confirm it was exactly as inelegant as it sounds.

Now, the nostalgia cravings in us might enjoy seeing this again – not unlike watching NFL highlights from the 1970s featuring massive helmet-to-helmet collisions, the type you’re glad have been outlawed, but also can’t stop watching. Deep down, though, we know things are better today.

Then there’s the actual schedule. When he first introduced the idea of the FedEx Cup playoffs, then-commissioner Tim Finchem explained, “We couldn’t carry it very far into football and have it really have a huge impact, and so it came out basically the way it did.”

While the original concept was to end the campaign before football season really got underway, it took a dozen years until the final playoff events didn’t coincide with the first few weeks of football, an improvement which only seems outlandish in how long it took to amend.

There are more alterations coming, too.

The contract with title sponsor FedEx ends after next year’s playoffs. A match-play format has already been approved for the finale beginning in 2028. The final events also seem destined to rotate on not just a more regular basis, but to iconic and rarely-seen venues such as Cypress Point, Pine Valley and Seminole, according to a PGA Tour announcement released earlier this year.

These potential changes should all be viewed not just as a positive for all those involved, but as an investment in a concept which has evolved so much over the past two decades.

The impending format still won’t be perfect, because perfection for this scenario still won’t exist, but it will continue to offer three weeks of limited-field events featuring the biggest stars, then wraps up by crowning a singular player as the winner and gets the heck out of the way before the behemoth known as football season ever begins. If nothing else, it beats the alternative.