Everything Breaks the Tour's Way

Sunday was a rotten day for us hard-core cynics of the world.

There just wasn't much to rail about as the best player in the world rightfully captured the flawed FedEx Cup, while the people's choice on this day overcame some wrenching off-course issues to win the Tour Championship itself.

When Tiger Woods locked up the FedEx Cup title with his second-place finish Sunday, and Phil Mickelson won the tournament itself, everything came up aces for the PGA Tour's third rendition of the 'playoff' series, proving you can often forget about the bumpy journey, when the destination is all wine and roses.

Woods all but locked up Player-of-the-Year honors when he, er, scored enough points at Atlanta's East Lake Golf Club to narrowly win the yearlong FedEx series. Points, bleh.

But whether the PGA Tour's counting points, goals, birdies, or whatever, justice was done.

Woods, despite going winless in the majors this year, is still the world's best player, and did more than enough over the course of the year to secure the $10 million bonus that went to the FedEx winner -- even if was a lot closer than it should have been.

Meantime, gallery favorite Mickelson was rolling putts in from all over the Georgia countryside on his way to a victory in the series' final event. One can only hope that Phil's flourish was a sign that things with his family are also going so well.

Mickelson's wife, Amy, was diagnosed with breast cancer in May. Only six weeks later, it was announced his mother, Mary, was diagnosed with the same blasted disease.

Mickelson sounded positively bouyant after his round Sunday.
"It feels great to have won," he said. "It's been frustrating as far as the last few months, but I look at it as a fortunate year because [wife] Amy and my mom are going to be great."

Which, of course, is the best news of all.

See what I mean? It was a bad day for cynics.

Lipouts

If you were listening closely this weekend you might have heard that LPGA veteran Sophie Gustafson cruised past Lorean Ochoa to win the CVS/pharmacy LPGA Challenge in a place called Danville, Calif.
It was Gustafson's first win in six years, and kept Ochoa winless in last her last 11 events. Ochoa has dominated the tour the past three years, winning 21 times over that period, so her mini-slump is raising eyebrows.

But most of you probably didn't know that, because most of you probably don't pay attention to the LPGA.

One of the big behind-the-scenes stories in the off-season will be who is picked to run the tour. When Carolyn Bivens was sent packing, or packed and sent her regards in July, the circuit was left without a commissioner, and a bit of a mess on its hands.

There is simply no excuse that a tour featuring talented, attractive players should be languishing permanently in the back woods of the Golf Channel.

The Grill Room firmly believes the tour is a sleeping giant of a sports league if only it were given some good direction. We'll have more on this in the coming weeks...

And one more bit of cynic-busting news from East Lake...
Turns out the weekend TV ratings were nearly double what they were a year ago. The event did a 3.3 overnight rating Sunday compared to 1.8 a year ago. On Saturday the numbers were 2.4 compared to 1.3 in 2008.

Pretty respectable when you consider they were up against ratings-hog football.

Last year, you had Camilo Villegas holding off Sergio Garcia in a playoff.
This year, Woods and Mickelson got loads of TV time. Not hard to figure out what happened.

We're altogether fedup with the FedEx

Great minds...

On Tuesday, we laid out a simple suggestion to the brass at PGA headquarters aimed at making their confusing FedEx Cup playoffs less like chess and a lot more like checkers.
Our aim was to offer up a simple scoring system that would allow pros and high-handicappers alike the opportunity to follow the event with a real good clue of how it worked.

Basically, we advocated using good ol' golf scoring to determine the standings, rather than some point system that only Apple and Dell understood.

So today, while refurbishing the joint (we hope you like the upgrade), and busily readying for another busy weekend of football, we came across this column from Sports Illustrated's superb golf writer, Gary Van Sickle.

Essentially, Van Sickle is advocating almost the exact approach to putting the fix on these playoffs as the Grill Room, and for the same reasons.

In fairness to Van Sickle, he points out he's made this suggestion before, so it looks like the GR unknowingly drafted his good idea. Either way, we feel like we are in pretty good company with a pretty good suggestion.

Van Sickle also made another excellent point as to why this confounding scoring system needs changing: If a player has no idea where he stands on the golf course, how does he know how to approach the closing holes tactically?
For example: If a guy needs only bogey on the final hole to get the requisite points needed to advance, or in the case of the final tournament maybe even win, wouldn't it be a tremendous help if he knew that?

As is, unless his caddy is also lugging a TV around, a player might as well be playing with a blindfold on, because there is no way this information can make its way onto the golf course. That's inexcusable

Van Sickle also suggests that the winner of each event earn a five-stroke bonus in order that a win really means something. We can go along with that.

As we pointed out in Tuesday's column, adopting this new approach might mean, "some dude named Tiger could play out of his mind and go into the final weekend with a 16-shot lead or something."
Once again, we didn't know how right we were. It turns out that Tiger would actually have a 15-shot lead over Paddy Harrington heading into next Thursday's Tour Championship at Atlanta's East Lake Golf Course if our suggested scoring format had been adopted this year (see chart below).

Granted, the chances of Tiger blowing a 15-shot lead are about as good as me playing in next year's event, so the drama would be tempered next week at East Lake, but at least the best player would have been identified over the course of the event.

On the other hand, if Tiger finishes strongly in the event, yet under the current jury-rigged system still comes up short for the overall title, what do you want to bet the FedEx finally gets the fix it needs pronto?

By advocating the use of cumulative scoring over the Cup's four stops, and allowing five shots to the three winners, this is how the current leaderboard would look entering the final event:
(*) denotes current standings

1. (1) -44 Tiger Woods
2. (6) -29 Padraig Harrington
3. (3) -27 Jim Furyk
4. (2) -24 Steve Stricker
5. (8) -18 Scott Verplank
6. (18) -18 Kevin Na
7. (4) -18 Zach Johnson
8. (11) -16 Dustin Johnson
9. (25) -12 Steve Marino
10. (27) -9 Mike Weir
11. (12) -9 Nick Watney
12. (30) -7 John Senden
13. (28) -5 Luke Donald
14. (15) -5 Retief Goosen
15. (19) -4 David Toms
16. (23) -4 Hunter Mahan
17. (29) -3 Jerry Kelly
18. (14) -1 Phil Mickelson
19. (17) +1 Brian Gay
20. (9) +4 Kenny Perry
21. (21) +12 Y.E. Yang

Players who missed a cut and would not have advanced to Tour Championship:
Heath Slocum (5)
Sean O'Hair (7)
Jason Dufner (10)
Geoff Ogilvy (13)
Marc Leishman (16)
Lucas Glover (20)
Ernie Els (22)
Angel Cabrera (24)
Stewart Cink (26)

Thanks again for Van Sickle's help with this one.

Torrey Pines hosts LPGA
The LPGA starts one of its elite tournaments today when the Samsung World Championship tees off at venerable Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego.

It's only the second time the tour has visited Torrey Pines. It'll be interesting to see how the ladies handle the tough track, and how well the tournament's received by the locals.

Paula Creamer defends her title in the limited-field event that will see only 20 players vying for the $1-million purse.

Please fix the FedEx already!

Because we believe in straight talk and candor in the Grill Room, the management feels compelled to warn you that this column is mostly about golf's FedEx Cup.
Who says we don't look after you around here, eh?

To those of you brave enough to stick this one out, let's move on...

Yes, golf's version of the 'playoffs' has improved. The gods of Ponte Vedra Beach actually managed to make the confounding format a little more compelling and comprehensible this year.

And, yes again, the result of any championship system (sorry, Commissioner Finchem, this is a points race, not a playoff), no matter how wacky, should be to determine the best player or team when it is all over.

Well, right now Tiger Woods is leading the FedEx race, and even if he took an 0-for-4 in this year's majors, is still undeniable the game's best player by about the length of a solidly struck 3-wood.

Further, if you've been watching any of the FedEx tournaments the last three weeks, you'll notice all the big names are still playing -- Ernie, Phil, Sergio, Padraig, etc.
This might be the system's biggest caveat, because before the FedEx came along, chasing these guys away from their mansions and onto the golf course in September was like coaxing a smile from Tiger.

So the FedEx has accomplished some of the things it set out to do.

But how many of you out there brave enough to still be reading this column understand the FedEx Cup? Come on, let's see a show of hands. Put your hand down, commissioner.
Really? Nobody?

Me either -- and neither do many of the players.

Trust me, if a certified golf geek like myself can't walk you through this, it's broken, and not worth my time, or yours, to explain. If you really, really want to try to understand the rules, read this, but please return -- all three of you.

The fix

Assuming you're back, we have a suggestion to make this thing a snap to understand and most likely even more compelling to watch: Get rid of the points, and base the thing strictly on golf results. You know, like under par and over par, and all that?

The player with the lowest cumulative score after the final four events and 16 rounds of golf wins. Period.

Oh, I suppose you could keep the points system throughout the season. That is pretty easy to understand. The better you finish in a tournament the more points you get. The better you play over the course of the year, the more points you earn.

But once you get to golf's version of the Final Four, start anew and dump the points.

Let's say the top 80 point-earners of the year earn a spot into the first of the Fedex Cup's final four events.
After the first week of action, you drop the bottom 20, and 60 players move onto the second stop. There would be no cuts.
Most important, their scores carry over from the previous tournament.

After the second event you drop another 20, and the remaining 40 players and their cumulative scores from the previous two tournaments play on.
After the third event you drop another 20, until you are left with the top-20 players based on scoring from the previous three stops, not points.

Could there be flaws in this system? Absolutely. The biggest might be if, golf gods forbid, Tiger shot his way out of it with a horrible first or second tournament.
Certainly, some top players would fall victim to this new format each year. But if you can't crack the top 60 out of 80, or 40 out of 60, you don't deserve a shot at a championship anyway, right?

And if these stars managed to scrape by into the next tournament, they'd have a chance to move up the leaderboard over the next four rounds.

Of course, there would also be the possibility of a run-away. Some dude named Tiger could play out of his mind and go into the final weekend with a 16-shot lead or something. Even if that happened, you couldn't deny the fact that the tour had identified the best player. And 16-shot lead or not, TV loves Tiger.

No, we see nothing but upside to this suggestion, and, most important: everybody would understand the dang thing.

Lip-outs...

There's been a lot made this past week in the golf world about Greg Norman using one of his two captain's picks on countryman Adam Scott for the looming Presidents Cup competition, Oct. 8-11, at San Francisco's Harding Park.

The choice, and the fact Norman never allegedly even gave him a courtesy call, irked one Rory Sabbatini.

While the haughty Shark has always battled a chip on his shoulder disguised as a fin, I'm not sure what other choice he had here.

Yes, Scott had a horrendous season, tumbling 50 places to No. 53 in the world rankings, and even allegedly conceded he should have been left off the team.

But when Sabbatini's your next best option you have no other option. Sabbatini hasn't exactly been tearing it up, either, and sits at No. 41 in the world rankings. He has not finished in the top 30 of any event since his victory in the Byron Nelson Championship in May.

And if it came down to a tie-breaker between the two in Norman's mind, then he no doubt gave the nod to Scott, who is very well-liked by his fellow players. Sabbatini...er, not so much.
In a team event camaraderie is crucial.

Norman should get kudos for nabbing Japan's 17-year-old golfing sensation, Ryo Ishikawa, with his other pick. If one of the major aims of this event is to generate interest around the world, capturing the golf-crazy Japanese market is key. Most important, this kid can flat play.

On the U.S. side, captain Fred Couples nabbed this year's U.S. Open champ Lucas Glover, and last year's Ryder Cup stalwart Hunter Mahan, surprising no one.
A case could have been made for either Brian Gay or Dustin Johnson. Both have won twice over the last calendar year.

Still, Couples called the choice of Mahan "a no-brainer."

Maybe, but one thing's for sure, with the emergence of its younger guns, the U.S. suddenly has a very deep roster of players to choose from.

A look at the teams:
International:
Geoff Ogilvy, Vijay Singh, Camilo Villegas, Retief Goosen, Ernie Els, Angel Cabrera, Mike Weir, Robert Allenby, Yang, Tim Clark, Adam Scott, and Ryo Ishikawa.

U.S.:
Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Kenny Perry, Zach Johnson, Stewart Cink, Sean O'Hair, Anthony Kim, Justin Leonard, Lucas Glover, and Hunter Mahan.