The major championships are complete for the year, which to some will mean the golf season is over, too.
Not so fast. Before even getting a chance to catch our breath, we’ve got the playoffs coming up. For those who are snickering, your chuckles are understandable. But … and this is a big but … golf tournaments have never ceased being played after the year’s final major, and if you are going to play them, you might as well try to attach some meaning to them. The FedEx Cup playoffs have their detractors, and you can rattle off numerous flaws in the system. But you have to remember what the PGA Tour was like after the major championships and before this FedEx Cup system was put in place. It was basically a two-month run of tournaments nobody cared about, including many of the top players. They typically used that time to rest and gear up for the lucrative offseason events, while the tour’s rank and file slugged it out hoping to earn their tour cards for the following year. Several of the top names even skipped the season-ending Tour Championship, a boondoggle for the top 30 on the money list with no cut and a guaranteed payday.
Now, at least, the FedEx Cup brings nearly all the top players together for a four-week run of tournaments that crowns a season-long champion. It’s never going to be as big as a major championship, but the fact that nearly every big name in the game will go from New York to Boston to Chicago to Atlanta over a five-week stretch suggests something must be right.