As this is being written the Deutsche Bank Championship is in progress the second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, what the PGA Tour calls its postseason.
When the FedEx Cup was first implemented three years ago, the idea was to create a championship series that would rival the postseason in professional team sports or NASCAR for the attention of the casual sports fan.
Let there be no mistake, there is an upside to the FedEx Cup.
Because of the playoff system, today’s top players play later into the season than they used to.
Over the past two decades, golf’s biggest names would go home for the winter after the PGA Championship in mid-August, particularly if they were the parents of school-aged children. With their places on tour secure, the stars of the sport would bypass the final stretch of the season, a circumstance that led to weak fields and unhappy sponsors.
With the playoff system in place, the likes of Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk have an incentive to extend their playing schedules.
The FedEx Cup also has restored the luster to events like The Barclays (this year’s first playoff stop) which had slipped in prominence in recent years.
When The Barclays was in its heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the Westchester Classic, it was the richest tournament on the PGA Tour.
The BMW Classic, which begins September 9 at Cog Hill in Chicago, is a descendent of the Western Open which for many years was as highly regarded as a major championship.
Restoring events like these to prominence is good for the game.
But the view from here is that the FedEx Cup will never have the prestige of the World Series, or college basketball’s Final Four.
There are two reasons for this.
First, the FedEx Cup plays out at a time when the casual sports fan is beginning to focus on the opening of the National Football League season. When the Tour Championship is played, it’s a safe bet to say that many fans who might have watched it will be tuning in to the NFL instead.
The additional circumstance that works against the public’s embracing the PGA Tour’s idea of a postseason is the tradition of the game itself.
For years, golf has had a de facto playoff system; the four major championships which, combined with tournaments such as the Players and the WGC events, truly identify the best player in the sport.
That scenario is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, not should it. For as much as in any other sport, the traditions in golf still matter.
That’s an arrangement no pseudo playoff arrangement will alter.