It's Time for the PGA Tour to Reinvent the FedEx Cup. Here's How

Any event that Viktor Hovland wins is, by definition, a fun event, but this year’s FedEx Cup finale mostly reinforced what had already become clear: Five years in, the format is not working. Giving players “starting strokes” based on FedEx Cup standings makes the tournament less interesting. Only a few players can realistically finish first, which makes a blowout more likely. It all feels gimmicky anyway. There isn’t enough tension.

The time is right for the PGA Tour to dramatically reinvent the FedEx Cup. If the Tour completes its deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund—the deadline is supposed to be the end of this year—then it will have full control over the sport of men’s golf and the money to pursue ideas that were previously infeasible. It can get creative and please three important constituencies: players, golf fans and non-fans it wants to attract.

Enough talking about how much money the FedEx Cup winner gets. That matters to players, obviously, but who else wants to hear about it? It’s gross. The public knows athletes make obscene money and is generally fine with it. Nobody watches the NBA Finals to see who will win more money. We watch because it feels like a big deal. There is something significant at stake. The end of the Tour’s season-long event should feel like that, too.

I was originally in favor of the current format, for the simple reason that I despised the old one. You remember the old one: The Tour Championship was a regular old tournament that happened to be last in the FedEx Cup playoffs. It violated my top priority for any golf tournament, which is that winning has to be better than not winning. Sounds simple enough, right? But the old format created dueling priorities: A player who led the FedEx Cup but trailed in the Tour Championship might have to decide whether to be aggressive (to win the tournament) or conservative (to win the FedEx Cup). The mere possibility of this infected the whole Tour Championship, at least for me.

The current format fixed that problem. The FedEx Cup leader starts the Tour Championship with a lead. All others trail by anywhere from two to 10 strokes, depending on where they are in the FedEx Cup standings. From there, they all try to win the tournament.

It still sounds good-ish to me until I watch it. It just doesn’t work. Yes, everybody is trying to win the tournament, but what does that even mean? Through three rounds, Hovland had taken one more stroke than Xander Schauffele but led him by four. They ended up with the same score for the week but different scores for the tournament.

This is a 30-player tournament, but the winner has started in the top 10 every year. What is the point of a 30-player event if 20 guys can’t win? The Tour could tweak the starting strokes, but that would create another problem: If the 30th-best player in a given season wins the FedEx Cup, that diminishes the value of season-long standings.

Start fresh. The Tour is hoping to do that anyway. The presumed return of LIV Golfers to the Tour—that is the goal, even if it’s not clear how to implement it—will bring extra buzz and more recognizable players than before. The stars who left for LIV are still well-known, and in the meantime, the Tour has created new ones.

The problem with a traditionally structured match-play tournament is that it’s too random. Being the higher seed doesn’t give anyone that much of an advantage. The Tour can’t tout the FedEx Cup as a full-season competition and then put the top 32 players in a match-play bracket at the end.

But here is what the Tour can do: create a smaller, fairer match-play finale to the playoffs.

Here is How a New FedEx Playoff Finale Could Work:

1. Keep the regular-season standings. The top five players in the standings clinch spots in the match-play finale.

2. Hold a three-tournament playoff. Five more players earn spots in the match-play finale based on where they stand at the end of this playoff: the three tournament winners and then the next five players in the standings.

3. Keep the Tour Championship as the last tournament of the playoffs, with a 30-player field. But restore a normal match-play format. That way, it feels like a real tournament again, with real stakes—and the 100th-best player of the season can’t just get hot for a week and earn a spot in the playoff.

4. If anybody who has already clinched a spot in the playoff wins the Tour Championship, they get the No. 1 seed in the match-play finale. They can also improve their seeding by playing well or—especially—winning the first two playoff tournaments.

5. The Tour now has 10 players for its match-play finale. They have all earned their way in, either through exceptional regular-season play or really good regular-season play followed by exceptional playoff performances. Since there are only 10, the Tour is assured of a truly deserving winner … but we don’t want all 10 to have an equal chance. There has to be value in earning a higher seed.

So: In the first round, the No. 7 seed faces No. 10, and No. 8 faces No. 9.

In the second round, the 7-10 and 8-9 winners face the No. 5 and 6 seeds.

In the third round, the two second-round winners face the No. 3 and 4 seeds.

In the semifinals, the two third-round winners face the No. 1 and 2 seeds.

The two semifinal winners meet in the final.

Players get paid more the further they advance, whether they did it with byes or by winning matches.

This way, everybody in the playoff is highly incentivized to try to win each week. The Tour championship at East Lake remains a signature event but becomes a real tournament again. Players know the better they play, the more money they make—but fans don’t have to pay any attention to the money.

Anybody who wins the FedEx Cup clearly earned it on the course, in the way that anybody who wins the Super Bowl clearly earned it on the field. The NFL’s 14th-best team has a chance to win the Super Bowl, but the path to do it is so challenging that any team that pulls it off has championship credibility by the end. If the 10th-best golfer wins five straight match-play elimination matches, he earned the title.

Is it risky to ask fans to tune in to watch just two golfers, without knowing who they will be? Sure. But the Tour should look at this as a way to reinforce and create stardom.

Now comes a crucial part: The Tour has to make this feel special—unlike anything that golf fans see the rest of the year. Single-elimination match play is part of that. But also, the match-play finale should be on the West Coast every year, to create a prime-time window. The last few years have shown us that prime-time golf on the West Coast draws better ratings; the recent U.S. Open at L.A. Country Club is just the latest example.

The match-play finale should also be contested at the same course every year. That way, fans associate it with the match-play finale in the same way they associate the Masters with Augusta National or The Players with Sawgrass.

This is where that PIF money comes in. The Tour can think as big as it wants to think. It can offer a few billion dollars for Pebble Beach and, if the bid is accepted, hold its finale there. I’m pretty sure the Tour can find ways to monetize owning Pebble the rest of the year.

Or—I actually like this idea better—the Tour can make a run at Cypress Point. The club is surely not for sale, but why not offer a 30-year deal to host one tournament a year there? Cypress Point used to be the cohost of the PGA Tour stop at Pebble, so there is precedent. (It lost hosting privileges in 1990 because it had no Black members, but now it does.) Cypress Point will host the Walker Cup in 2025, so there is reason to believe the club wants to host prestigious events. Take a shot! See whether Jim Nantz can sell his fellow Cypress members on the idea of hosting a signature event that makes them important people in the sport—the West Coast version of the Masters.

The Tour could also hire a beloved modern-day architect like Tom Doak or Gil Hanse to build a new course for this event—the West Coast version of Sawgrass. The goal is to create something that feels cool, distinct and meaningful. Everything should be under discussion.

There are better ways to do this. Maybe my way is the wrong way. But two years from now, the Tour should not end up in the same place—literally or figuratively.