5/29/25
The PGA Tour announced on Tuesday that the format for the TOUR Championship would revert to its original format, with no starting strokes. Recently, the format was a starting strokes format, where, depending on where players were in the FedEx Cup Standings, that would determine how many strokes under par players would start at for the TOUR Championship. The FedEx Cup has recently been decided at the TOUR Championship, with whoever wins the season finale wins the FedEx Cup.
The PGA Tour has decided to eliminate the starting strokes, and everyone starts at even par, like a normal golf tournament. Last year, Scottie Scheffler had the benefit of the starting strokes to win the FedEx Cup, despite Collin Morikawa having the lowest gross score for the week.
The fans weren’t too thrilled about the changes to the playoffs, where the winner of the TOUR Championship wins the FedEx Cup. Fans were even less thrilled about the starting strokes experiment for the last six years.
It’s also fascinating that the change is happening in the middle of the season. Not too often does a league or sport change the way its season-long championship is won, during that season. While there’s still not a perfect playoff format for individual sports, it’s a step in the right direction.
Individual sports are unique from team sports, where winning the season-long championship doesn’t typically equate to winning a crown-jewel event. People don’t recite that Tiger Woods has won the FedEx Cup twice. They remember he’s won 15 major championships. Hélio Castroneves never won IndyCar’s season-long championship, but he’s won the Indianapolis 500 four times, and IndyCar fans remember that. Dale Earnhardt won seven Winston Cup Championships (NASCAR), but the big knock on The Intimidator was that he didn’t win the Daytona 500 until 1998 in his 20th attempt.
The list goes on, but the point is, not every sport needs to have an extravagant season-long championship. Golf has four to six weekends out of the year, depending on the year, where it’s one of, if not the main, focus of the sports world. That’s not bad, compared to some team sports. Most importantly, golf capitalizes on the schedule not having its peak events NFL’d. The PGA Tour schedule avoids the NFL season for the most part. The majors have no obstruction from the NFL schedule, whether it’s games, the draft, free agency, etc.
Men’s professional golf is in a tricky spot. Golf YouTuber videos garner more views than some professional golf tournaments. There are two tours that at first hated each other, but now are trying to negotiate a deal, and no one knows what the status is on these negotiations. There also isn’t another Tiger Woods that will burst onto the scene and bring the game the popularity it saw in the 2000s. So yes, men’s professional golf has to get creative to draw in the most viewers and fans. Attempting to manufacture drama isn’t how to do it.
However, at least they are beginning to listen to their most ardent fans. Next on the agenda, get rid of those obnoxious big block letter hats.
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