FedEx Cup: Delivering Results?

We're now two weeks into the brand new era in golf that is the FedEx Cup. Through two events, Vijay Singh is the first ever consecutive-week leader of the points-based playoff system. By virtue of his win at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, Singh scored 4,500 FedEx Cup points. Of course, winning the first ever FedEx Cup event would make you the leader of the series. Vijay followed up his victory at Kapalua with a tie for 34th place at the Sony Open in Hawaii. He earned a measly 121 FedEx Cup points for the performance.

Those 121 points were enough, though, to ensure that he maintained his lead for at least one more week. Paul Goydos scrapped and clawed his way to victory at the Sony Open in Hawaii. For winning the first full field event of the 2007 season, Goydos earned the same 4,500 points that Vijay Singh won by winning the Mercedes-Benz Championship.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold the presses. That means that, in the eyes of the FedEx Cup, the Mercedes-Benz and Sony events are basically worth the same to win. Being completely honest, though, or completely obvious, these two events have nothing in common except that they're both held in Hawaii.

The Mercedes-Benz Championship is a limited field event. It is an invitation-only tournament that is contested among players that had a victory on the PGA Tour in the prior season. With withdrawals and players that did not participate, only 33 players finished all 72 holes of the event. This means that Vijay Singh beat 32 other golfers in order to earn the 4,500 FedEx Cup points awarded to the event champion.

Ignore for a moment that the quality of the 32 golfers in that field is higher than the average PGA Tour event. The sheer lack of entries makes this event a little bit easier to win than a full field PGA Tour event. Yes, that was part of the point of having a guaranteed payday event like this one as a reward for performance in the prior season. But should that carry over to the new FedEx Cup? Consider that even last-place finisher Ben Curtis, who finished a ridiculous 34 shots out of the lead, picked up 148 FedEx Cup points by virtue of just finishing the event. What an accomplishment.

Now, fast forward one week, when Paul Goydos is the champion of the Sony Open in Hawaii. He picks up 4,500 points for finishing in first. He also did not beat 32 other golfers. Instead, he beat 140 other golfers for the title. One could say that while Goydos did beat 140 other golfers that the comparison is not completely valid, since not all of those golfers played all four rounds. Fine. Seventy-two golfers made the cut this past week. Even using that number, Goydos defeated double the number of golfers that Vijay Singh did, but earned the same amount of FedEx Cup points for the feat. It seems a bit lopsided in one direction.

You may agree with the above and think that Goydos should have more FedEx Cup points because he beat more golfers in a full-field event. That argument may not hold up, though, to those who believe that strength of field would be a better consideration for awarding points to winners on the PGA Tour.

The field at Kapalua for the Mercedes-Benz Championship is, in principle, supposed to be stronger than that of the Sony Open. Though there is a lot of crossover between the two events, it is presumed that a collection of champions from last season is greater than a full field of tour veterans and rookies, winners, and not-so-much winners. If you are of this opinion, you should still be outraged because then you believe that Vijay Singh beat a superior field and his win is still considered to be equal to that of ... Paul Goydos?!

Personally, I hold that Goydos should have received more points for beating more golfers. I think this because the difference in talent level between golfers at all levels of the PGA Tour is very small. The difference between receiving an invitation to Kapalua and not is so small that the fields in the Aloha Swing are fairly similar. The FedEx Cup does not recognize strength of field, though, in how it distributes points.

Points in the FedEx Cup are distributed to among the players that make the cut for that week's event. In the case of the Mercedes-Benz Championship, there is no cut. Thus, every player that successfully finishes the event earns some FedEx Cup points. (Just call that a perk of winning on Tour.)

Let's return, now, to the example of Ben Curtis. As mentioned, Curtis finished dead last at the Mercedes-Benz Championship and earned 148 points for his efforts. 25,000 FedEx Cup points were available in that event. As a percentage of the points awarded, Curtis picked up approximately 0.6% of the points available.

Looking at the final leaderboard for the Sony Open in Hawaii, 72 golfers made the cut and finished the tournament. That means that 72 golfers earned FedEx Cup points for the event. Tom Lehman was the low man on the totem pole among those who made the cut. He earned 49 points for his performance, which comes out to just about 0.2% of the total points available (the same 25,000 available for the Mercedes-Benz).

While Cap'n Lehman was in the same percentile as Ben Curtis among those who made money in their respective events, Lehman did manage to beat over 70 other golfers on his way to the 72nd-place finish. Despite that, Curtis earned approximately three times the number of points that Lehman did by beating no one. Again, something appears very crooked about that. Ben Curtis beat no one and got 148 points. Tom Lehman beat a whole lot of golfers and got 49 points. Someone explain this injustice to me in a way that is rational.

It does not take much to see that there are still plenty of kinks to be worked out when it comes to the FedEx Cup. It is only natural considering this is the first year of it being staged. Through two weeks, though, it has become obvious that limited field events will become point grabs for the FedEx Cup just like they used to be known as money grabs for the top players. Add in that there are bonus points assigned to the World Golf Championships events, known notoriously as free pay days, and it becomes more apparent that the FedEx Cup is catered to ensure the success of the Tour's staple players.

In the end, if the system holds under this structure, the FedEx Cup is self-defeating. It was already difficult to conceive how the best players on Tour could miss the playoff series because the top 144 golfers on the points list would make that first event — a task that does not sound all that challenging. By porking limited field events with extra points, though, the Tour only assures the top players that they have a spot locked up in the FedEx Cup playoffs.

In turn, this means that top players which may have been motivated to play in more events by a potential $10 million pay-out no longer have to adjust their desktop calendars from last season. They have a spot secured for Westchester. That works out for the fans to mean that, under the current guidelines, most of the best players will not enter more events just because of the FedEx Cup. Then again, they probably knew that was the case when Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods decided not to play at Kapalua.