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Thread: PGA Playoffs

  1. #1
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    PGA Playoffs

    John Feinstein rips them pretty good here:

    If Phil Mickelson had followed his victory at the Masters by winning the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship, he would have made history by winning the Grand Slam. He also would have accumulated a total of 2,400 FedEx Cup points for those four titles.

    When Matt Kuchar won the Barclays, he received 2,500 FedEx Cup points.

    That's right. Win all four majors, receive 2,400 points. Win one of the Playoff events, receive 100 points more.
    --Jason "I am not sure I like his solution -- need to think about what would work best" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    John Feinstein rips them pretty good here:



    --Jason "I am not sure I like his solution -- need to think about what would work best" Evans
    The problem isn't "what would work best"--the problem is that the whole idea of a golf "playoff," given the nature and history of the sport, is lame.

  3. #3
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    Here's an idea

    The comments at the bottom of that article are great, especially this one:

    So, let's see . . . the playoffs are bad because Charley Hoffman is ranked second after two tournaments, yet he didn't play in any majors this year. Okay, valid point. So, we'll fix it . . . by resetting everyone to zero and making it plausible, nay probable, that Hoffman would be in second place after two tournaments despite not playing in any majors. Classic Feinstein-ian logic. Well done, John, well done. Keep up the marginal work.
    I think the main problem with the golf playoffs is that it is hard to have a "survive and advance" elimination system like other sports and still have the "best" player win in the end. In other sports there are plenty of times where the best teams from the regular season don't win (99 Blue Devils which still hurts, 19-1 Pats, etc), but in general a very deserving team wins, and the true cinderella's like Nova in '84 are few and far between. Golf is too up and down week to week, so you could have someone like a Charlie Hoffman have a decent but not great year and then win the last tournament to take the prize.


    Having said that, here is what I would propose:

    Playoffs are 4 events.

    I would invite the top 168 from the money list, and play 3 tournaments where we cut 40 each week so that we're left with 48 players. To reward regular season performance, I would exempt up to 14 players from the cuts - 4 major winners, 4 WGC winners, winner of the Players, and anyone who is in the top 5 in the money list who did not win one of these events.

    Final event of the year is a 6 day match play event. For the first round, 16 players get a bye (my 14 exempt players plus the next 2 (or more if there are repeats in my exempt list) on the money list as of the current date so as to includes the previous playoff events. On Tuesday 32 players get to 16, then we add the 16 first round byes on Wed, getting to 16 thursday, 8 friday, final 4 on saturday, and championship sunday.

    Basically, this is pretty similar to the college bball system, where the first few playoff events would be analogous to conference tourney's where people can play their way in and improve their seeding for the main event. I've tried to protect people who had a good year from having a bad early playoff event and missing the cut, but they still need to win on the field to take the final prize. The cons are: 1) that a cinderella still can get hot and win the match play (even though they would need to go through many players to get there), 2) the first three playoff events are less "meaningful" since I've allowed so many players automatic berths to the final event, and 3) match play is somewhat of a different game than stroke play so may not be consistent enough with the regular season, and 4) match play golf, especially the final, suck on TV since there is so much time between shots.

    Thoughts? I think this makes for interesting debate.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by mkirsh View Post
    The comments at the bottom of that article are great, especially this one:



    I think the main problem with the golf playoffs is that it is hard to have a "survive and advance" elimination system like other sports and still have the "best" player win in the end. In other sports there are plenty of times where the best teams from the regular season don't win (99 Blue Devils which still hurts, 19-1 Pats, etc), but in general a very deserving team wins, and the true cinderella's like Nova in '84 are few and far between. Golf is too up and down week to week, so you could have someone like a Charlie Hoffman have a decent but not great year and then win the last tournament to take the prize.


    Having said that, here is what I would propose:

    Playoffs are 4 events.

    I would invite the top 168 from the money list, and play 3 tournaments where we cut 40 each week so that we're left with 48 players. To reward regular season performance, I would exempt up to 14 players from the cuts - 4 major winners, 4 WGC winners, winner of the Players, and anyone who is in the top 5 in the money list who did not win one of these events.

    Final event of the year is a 6 day match play event. For the first round, 16 players get a bye (my 14 exempt players plus the next 2 (or more if there are repeats in my exempt list) on the money list as of the current date so as to includes the previous playoff events. On Tuesday 32 players get to 16, then we add the 16 first round byes on Wed, getting to 16 thursday, 8 friday, final 4 on saturday, and championship sunday.

    Basically, this is pretty similar to the college bball system, where the first few playoff events would be analogous to conference tourney's where people can play their way in and improve their seeding for the main event. I've tried to protect people who had a good year from having a bad early playoff event and missing the cut, but they still need to win on the field to take the final prize. The cons are: 1) that a cinderella still can get hot and win the match play (even though they would need to go through many players to get there), 2) the first three playoff events are less "meaningful" since I've allowed so many players automatic berths to the final event, and 3) match play is somewhat of a different game than stroke play so may not be consistent enough with the regular season, and 4) match play golf, especially the final, suck on TV since there is so much time between shots.

    Thoughts? I think this makes for interesting debate.
    What about having stroke play, but don't clear the scores at the end of each week?
    What if you keep a running stroke-play score for 4 weeks?
    If you win week one by 2 strokes, you start with a 2 stroke lead next week.
    It would force players to play all 4 weeks as well.

    More thoughts?

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by 94duke View Post
    What about having stroke play, but don't clear the scores at the end of each week?
    What if you keep a running stroke-play score for 4 weeks?
    If you win week one by 2 strokes, you start with a 2 stroke lead next week.
    It would force players to play all 4 weeks as well.

    More thoughts?

    I think the goal of most playoffs is to crown a worthy champion, but also not to undermine the value of the regular season. So while I do like this idea for simplicity sake, it skips the type of reward most other sports playoffs have for doing well in the regular season (bye's, seeding, home field, etc). I guess you could accomplish this by giving players strokes to start the playoffs based on regular season results (or here's a wacky idea the PGA would never go for, mulligans, how fun would that be to watch?), but then you get trapped in the current points debate of how much everything is worth during the regular season, and potentially bring the situation where someone has such a huge lead to start that the playoff's are anti-climactic.

    If arguing against myself I guess I could concede that the regular season already has such weight because of the majors, tournament history, money, etc so that a restart at zero for the playoffs might work, and a long stretch of tournaments certainly allows the cream to rise to the top so it is interesting. Certainly would be better than what we have today.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by mkirsh View Post
    I guess you could accomplish this by giving players strokes to start the playoffs based on regular season results (or here's a wacky idea the PGA would never go for, mulligans, how fun would that be to watch?),
    Holy @#^@^! Mulligans! What an incredible idea! I love it, love it, love it!

    --Jason "Mulligan could only be taken off the green-- no second-chance putts" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  7. #7
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    I mean this in the nicest possible way...the next intelligent thing that Feinstein writes about golf will be his first. He's actually gotten a bigger profile in the golf world in the past couple of years by appearing on the Golf Channel, and I always want to change the channel when he comes on.

    So Feinstein doesn't like the playoffs now? He didn't like them when they were first conceived in 2007: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091002123.html

    The reason that more points were allocated to the winners of the tournaments in the playoffs was because in 2007, Tiger Woods won the Cup after skipping one of the playoff events, and Vijay Singh won the Cup in 2008 after he won the first 2 playoff tournaments and only had to show up for the last 2 events and he would win, no matter how badly he played. So now the playoff events carry much more weight in terms of the points that you accumulate, so that there can be more movement in the playoffs in the standings. However, that serves to devalue the achievements in the "regular season", which is apparently Feinstein's problem. The problem with his logic is that you can't have it both ways; either you value the regular season more and not have very much movement in the standings in the playoffs, or you value the playoffs more and some of the top guys from the "regular season" don't benefit from their performance. I tend to like the current system; in all other sports, you have to perform well in the playoffs, why should golf be any different? I think that Feinstein was a good writer in the past; now I think he just finds stuff to complain about, and pretty much beats dead horses into the ground.

    I like mkirsh's idea of a match play tournament to end the season to make it a true playoff, but I really doubt that the PGA Tour would go for that. Also, there is no way that 168 players would start the playoffs, people already complain that 120 guys make it in there. I would go 100 players to start, 75 for the 2nd tournament, 50 for the 3rd tournament, and 32 for a match play Tour Championship. For the Tour Championship, round of 32 on Thursday, round of 16 on Friday, round of 8 on Saturday morning with semifinals on Saturday afternoon, 36-hole final on Sunday.

  8. #8
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    Feb 2007
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    Steamboat Springs, CO

    Talking FedEx Cup or Nothing?

    Quote Originally Posted by arydolphin View Post
    I mean this in the nicest possible way...the next intelligent thing that Feinstein writes about golf will be his first. He's actually gotten a bigger profile in the golf world in the past couple of years by appearing on the Golf Channel, and I always want to change the channel when he comes on.
    I will resist the temptation to stand up for the ever-controversial John Feinstein because I happen to disagree with him on this point.

    The previous messages didn't mention the two central points of the golf playoff system:

    1. The fall season on the PGA Tour was in a death spiral. None of the tournaments had any significance for the best-known and richest players on the PGA Tour. Tiger, among others, would just blow these events off unless they had a personal or sponsorship interest. The FedEx Cup is designed to give life to the end of the season, and the only way to do that is to give those tournaments an enhanced weight.

    2. This is NASCAR redux, what the auto racing guys do to give some meaning to the final events of the season.

    So, what is the meaning of the FedEx Cup? It's a trophy and some prize money. While it is called the "Tour Championship," it is clearly not on the same level as a major championship.

    I don't see why there is any controversy. The alternative might realistically be to end the tour season on Labor Day and forget about the rest of the tournaments. It seems to me that having the FedEx Cup is a better idea.

    sagegrouse

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