Scottie Scheffler calls season-long FedEx Cup race ‘silly’: Is world No. 1 right about PGA Tour finals?

The PGA Tour’s season-long points race leader says the season-long points race is… “silly.” Scottie Scheffler has condemned the FedEx Cup Playoffs — the system used by the PGA Tour to determine the season-long champion — on the grounds that wins accumulated throughout the regular season are not as important as a player’s performance in the final three events of the year.

In Scheffler’s example, a player could win 15 or 20 times — or Actually win seven or eight times, like Scheffler is preparing to do — and still not be considered a champion for the entire season.

“I’ve been talking about that for the last couple of years. I think it’s ridiculous,” he said Wednesday. “You can’t call it a season-long race and boil it down to one tournament. Hypothetically, we go to East Lake and my neck hurts and it doesn’t heal like it did at The Players; I finish 30th in the FedExCup because I had to withdraw from the previous tournament? Is that really a season-long race? No. It is what it is.”

While players carry their points into the postseason and earn more points at the first two playoff events — this week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and next week at the BMW Championship — things will reset at the Tour Championship, where whoever finishes first will start the tournament 10 under par, whoever finishes second will start 8 under par and so on down the leaderboard.

“It’s an interesting tournament,” Scheffler said of the Tour Championship. “I don’t really see it as a season-long race as I think it’s called. But you have to find a way to balance it being a good television product and still being a season-long race. Right now, I don’t know exactly what the rankings are or anything like that, but I do know that you can’t really call it a season-long race when it’s a stroke-play tournament on the same golf course every year.”

Scheffler’s point is correct. If he were injured and had to withdraw from the Tour Championship, he would officially be listed as the 30th-best player in 2024 on the FedEx Cup points list (since he would finish last at the Tour Championship, a 30-player field). That’s quite a departure from the season Scheffler produced, when he won six times and earned a record $28 million in prize money.

But his point about TV ratings is also true. Without a reset at the Tour Championship, the season-long race will be all but over based on how far Scheffler leads going into that tournament. Scheffler’s lead over third-place FedEx Cup points winner Rory McIlroy, at 3,500 points, is significantly larger than McIlroy’s lead over … you (2,500 points).

“I like this format because without this format none of us would have had a chance to play Scottie because he was so far ahead,” McIlroy explained on Wednesday. “So I really like this format.”

McIloy added: “I think it makes the Tour Championship more interesting from a consumer perspective. Is it the fairest reflection of who the best player of the year is? Probably not. But I think at this point we’re not being completely fair, we’re in it for the entertainment and trying to put out the best product we can.

“Yeah, the first year it was a starter at the Tour Championship in 2019, I was able to win — and then again in 22. I like the format. It feels like a reset after the regular season. Everyone’s not quite on the same playing field, but it feels a little more like it.”

Love it or hate it, that’s what the PGA Tour is using now and for the foreseeable future. And while it takes some of the drama out of the early stages of the playoffs — Scheffler and No. 2 Xander Schauffele will almost certainly be the top two players heading into the Tour Championship — it also adds late-tournament intrigue to whoever can rise to those Nos. 3-5 spots.

While it’s understandable why Scheffler doesn’t like the format, McIlroy is right that it’s generally a better product for the fans, the consumers of the PGA Tour product — even if it’s unfair to a guy who’s having perhaps his best PGA Tour season in 15 years.