Its now been a few weeks since the end of the 2021 FedEx Cup Playoffs, with Patrick Cantlay being crowned the FedEx Champion. He won the tournament partly due to a good performance in the previous playoff events, which gave him a 10-under start to the Tour Championship and clear advantage.
The current FedEx Cup Playoffs format, which came into effect in 2019, has been controversial amongst both players and fans. Many believe that it gives an unfair advantage to golfers who play well at certain events. If you get hot at the right time, you win it all, they argue.
As we head into a new PGA Tour season, I thought it would be a good idea to review a popular proposed playoff format that has been the subject of much talk as of late. I don't believe it have a proper name yet, but I'm calling it "Event Aggregate".
THE EVENT AGGREGATE FORMAT EXPLAINED
The idea of an Event Aggregate playoff format is simple: keep a running score for players across the three playoff events and the lowest score at the end wins.
Let's break it down a bit more though.
As per usual, FedEx Cup points would be used throughout the PGA Tour regular season to determine the Top 125 players who get into the playoffs. At the start of the playoffs, the slate is wiped clean and points are no longer used. Instead, score is the ranking characteristic, with all players starting at even par, just like a normal tournament.
Starting with The Northern Trust, a cut is set after two rounds, reducing the field to 70 players, who have their scores recorded at the end of the tournament. These 70 players advance to the BMW Championship. The player with the lowest score wins The Northern Trust, as per normal.
At the BMW Championship, things would change a bit. Players would start with their final score from The Northern Trust. After two rounds, a new cut is set, to reduce the field to 30. The player with the lowest total score (summing both BMW and Northern Trust rounds) wins the BMW Championship.
This repeats for the Tour Championship, where players would start with their final score from the BMW Championship. No cut would be needed due to the small field size and the winner of the Tour Championship would win the FedEx Cup.
Another way to think of it is a re-seed after each playoff round, based off previous total score.
PROS AND CONS OF EVENT AGGREGATE
There are some positives to this format. To start, it is a similar format to those seen in the NBA and NHL, minus the home advantage as a result of high seeding. It makes things more fair for players within the playoffs (and I stress within the playoffs). It also eliminates the scenario where a player could win the Tour Championship but not the FedEx Cup.
Perhaps its biggest positive is its simplicity though, since you only need to keep track of score, not points and score, as under the current format.
Despite this, there are some blaring negatives to this format, the most significant being that this format does not reward excellent play during the regular season. For example, if a player wins three majors and another wins only a single tournament, they start the playoffs ranked equally. This could theoretically be fixed by introducing some sort of initial playoff seeding, similar to the Starting Strokes system, based on incoming FedEx Cup ranking. This would give weight to regular season play and an advantage to those who played well during it. Another negative is that some playoff events would mean more than others, depending on scores. This is expanded on in the case study below.
It's also worth noting that FedEx themselves would lose some advertising in this format, since the FedEx Cup points would only be used during the regular season. The playoff prize pool could still be distributed normally however, although the players would need to be divided up into three tiers (one for each playoff round), then ranked by scoring within those tiers.
EVENT AGGREGATE APPLIED TO THE 2021 FEDEX CUP PLAYOFFS
To see a real world application of this format, I decided to recalculate the 2021 Tour Championship leaderboard under the Event Aggregate format. Below is a table showing players with their individual score for each event and total aggregate score.
Notice Cantlay and Rahm tied for the lead and separated by a large margin; virtually the exact same scenario we saw at the 2021 Tour Championship, the only difference being under this format, an official playoff would be needed. This year, we saw a de facto playoff being contested between the two, during their final rounds.
Kevin Na also retains 3rd place, but Bryson DeChambeau moves up from 7th to 4th (due to good performance at the BMW Championship). The biggest jump is Erik Van Rooyen, who finished T22 under the current format, but would finish 6th under the Event Aggregate format, a difference worth $1.3 million in prize money.
Another thing to consider is that lower scoring playoff events would have more of an impact that others. For example, if someone shot a very low score at the BMW Championship, this could essentially win them the FedEx Cup, since they would start the Tour Championship with a very low score (sound familiar?). Depending on how tough East Lake plays, that margin may not be able to be closed by other players.
And what would a withdraw mean under this format? For example, Louis Oosthuizen and Patrick Reed are not in the above table because they withdrew from playoff events, thus could not post scores for them. Under the Event Aggregate format, they would not have been able to play in the Tour Championship. Could you just give them a score of par for the tournaments they missed? Not quite, because what if a playoff event finishes with an over par score, like some US Opens have?
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I think the Event Aggregate format is a neat idea, but one that needs a bit more thought before it's even considered for replacement of the current format. I think it could work for the FedEx Cup, but some sort of initial seeding would need to be implemented to give merit to regular season play and some of the other above mentioned kinks would need to be ironed out.
It does share some similarities with the current system in place, with the major difference being that the Event Aggregate system seeds every playoff round based off score, whereas the current system seeds only for the Tour Championship, based off points.
In my opinion, the key to a proper playoff format is balance. The format must be able to balance regular season merit with playoff event merit and fairness. I personally think that the current format should be modified, since it weights the playoff events so heavily. But, since it is the current format, and in place for the next PGA Tour season, we need to honor it as that.
What do you think the best format for the FedEx Cup Playoffs is? Comment with your thoughts below.
-Nick
Toronto Golf Reviews
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