The final round of the Tour Championship on Sunday at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta will wrap up 15 years of the FedEx Cup, the PGA Tour’s season-long points race that began in 2007.
Regardless of format, the number of events and points structure, the goal has been the same: a season-long points race, culminating in a playoff series in which the players who have performed the best during a PGA Tour season come together for one final huge payday.
The FedEx Cup has been criticized as redundancy of golf’s major championships, World Golf Championships and The Players with a points system too complicated for fans to understand — as if NASCAR fans have ever cared about that.
The PGA Tour will counter with FedEx lasting 15 years as a title sponsor, and under contract through 2027, and more than 98 percent of the eligible players competing over the balance of the competition.
This year, only one player, No. 8 Louis Oosthuizen, chose not to enter the Northern Trust. The only player missing from the top-70 that advanced to the BMW Championship was Patrick Reed, who was hospitalized with pneumonia.
That means the attendance rate was .991.
The series has had multiple incarnations. It started with three playoff events that pared the final 30 players on the points list to the Tour Championship. The points systems have been a work in progress, with the Tour adjusting it for more volatility and movement during the playoffs or to more weight given the regular season.
Until 2019, there was the possibility that the winner of the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup champion could be different players, and so it was 10 times. But beginning with the 2018-19 season, the Tour adopted the format of the points leader entering the Tour Championship to begin the week 10-under par, the second-place player 8-under, the third-place player 7-under and so on, with the bottom five players of the top-30 starting the week even par.
The winner of the Tour Championship is also the FedEx Cup champion, with Rory McIlroy (2019) and Dustin Johnson (2020) the first two to win under that format.
It’s possible for one of those players between Nos. 26-30 to win the Tour Championship. But it would take an extraordinary week at East Lake, with an extraordinary collapse by multiple players ahead of them.
The top-30 in Atlanta this week have also earned it, perhaps more than any time in the past 15 years. That’s because the FedEx Cup schedule included six majors and 48 tournaments because of events that were re-scheduled to the fall of 2020 due to the pandemic.
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Here is a primer for this weekend and a history of the FedEx Cup through its first 15 years:
How are points awarded?
The winner of regular-season PGA Tour events earns 500 points. Winners of World Golf Championship get 550 points. Winners of the four majors and The Players Championship get 600. Events held the same week as majors or WGCs are worth 300 points. Points through the rest of the field are adjusted accordingly. Players have to make the cut to earn points.
During the two FedEx Cup playoffs, the winners get 2,000 points. The initial field of 125 is knocked down to the top-70 for the BMW Championship, then to the top-30 for East Lake. When there were four events, the field was pared from 125 to 90.
Once the 30 players for the Tour Championship are decided, points are erased and the players are assigned scores in relation to par, or “starting strokes” to begin the first round at East Lake.
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What did that look like this week?
• Patrick Cantlay 10-under
• Tony Finau 8-under
• Bryson DeChambeau 7-under
• Jon Rahm 6-under
• Cameron Smith 5-under
• Justin Thomas, Harris English, Abraham Ancer, Jordan Spieth, Sam Burns 4-under
• Collin Morikawa, Sungjae Im, Viktor Hovland, Louis Oosthuizen, Dustin Johnson 3-under.
• Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Jason Kokrak, Kevin Na, Brooks Koepka 2-under.
• Cory Conners, Hideki Matsuyama, Stewart Cink, Joaquin Niemann, Scottie Scheffler 1-under.
• Daniel Berger, Erik van Rooyen, Sergio Garcia, Billy Horschel, Patrick Reed even par.
Major bennies
Regardless of what the last-place player in the Tour Championship shoots in the no-cut tournament, he’s already qualified for next year’s major championships and The Players and is guaranteed $395,000 for just turning in a valid scorecard for four rounds.
The FedEx Cup champion earns $15 million, which matches the total purse of The Players Championship. That’s right. $15 million. Which also is more than the combined career earnings of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Lee Trevino.
But consider also that D.J. LeMahieu is making $15 million for hitting .264 (as of Aug. 29) for the Yankees this season. So, it’s all relative.
About that $15 million
What to do with $15 million? Cameron Smith wasn’t sure. But if you’re a die-hard golf fan, here’s what you could buy with $15 million:
• Around 375,000 dozen Titleist Pro-V1 golf balls, at a retail of $39.95.
• Need a new driver? You could buy 30,000 of them at the top rate of $500 each.
• With $15 million, you could take more than 2,000 friends to the 2022 Masters, with weekly badges purchased for the current price quoted on secondary markets.
• Bobby Jones golf shirts are among the top of the line, usually selling for around $130. The FedEx Cup haul could keep you looking good but you’re gonna need a bigger closet, for 115,385 of them.
• Take your friends to the Masters – all 2,276 of them, according to the most recent Stub Hub price for 2022 Masters badges for the competitive rounds.
• You could also buy a golf course, or four or five. According to a 2018 Links Magazine survey of 114 golf courses listed by the Leisure Investment Properties Group, the average public golf course could be had for $3.1 million.
Who shows up in the playoffs?
Dustin Johnson has won more FedEx Cup playoff events than anyone, capturing The Northern Trust and the BMW Championship twice each, the Barclays once and the Tour Championship once for six titles. Rory McIlroy has won five and Tiger Woods four.
Other multiple winners have been Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Camilo Villegas, Billy Horschel, Justin Thomas, Steve Stricker, Jason Day, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh with two each.
However, let’s talk dollars. McIlroy is the all-time leading money winner in FedEx Cup events at $41,724,157, followed by Johnson ($40,444,641) and Woods ($39,042,804). Players among the top-10 in careers FedEx Cup earnings who played this week at East Lake are McIlroy, Johnson, Thomas, Spieth and Horschel.
If we’re talking attendance records, six players have qualified for the playoffs every year since the FedEx Cup began: Mickelson, Matt Kuchar of St. Simons Island, Ga., Bubba Watson, Adam Scott, Snedeker and Charley Hoffman.
Double-dippers
Only three players won the regular-season points race and then followed up by winning the FedEx Cup, Woods in 2007 and 2009 and Jordan Spieth in 2015. Woods has won the most regular-season points titles with five but probably should get a pass for 2008 when he was unable to compete in the playoffs due to leg surgery.
The lowest a regular-season champion finished in the final standings was Ernie Els in 2010 and Nick Watney in 2011, who both finished ninth in the final standings.
Horschel’s sprint to the top
The biggest jump anyone made in playoffs was Billy Horschel of Ponte Vedra Beach in 2014. He was 69th in the regular-season standings, then missed the cut in the first playoff event to drop to 82nd.
Billy Horschel of Ponte Vedra Beach won the FedEx Cup in 2014 after a late sprint from 82nd on the points list entering the final three playoff events.
But he then tied for second and won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship to win the FedEx Cup.
The next biggest jump was McIlroy going from 36th entering the playoffs to the 2016 FedEx Cup title.
Garry Smits is a writer for the Florida Times-Union, part of the USA Today Network.