Even Flow

Another long season in the books, as we've reached the TOUR Championship at East Lake. It's been reported that the PGA TOUR player advisory committee met a handful of times this season... and the only thing to come out of that meeting was to scrap the "starting strokes" of this event.

I'm always complaining about those starting strokes, while advocating for Match Play. So on one hand I'm happy with this decision, as it also makes the final event less gimmicky for this pool.

But on the other hand... that's all those guys could agree on? And now the TOUR is bragging about everyone starting at zero in their commercials? This feels like how the NCAA adamantly rejected a playoff format for decades... only to then adopt it and gaslight the public that this was their greatest idea.

The problem with a "playoff" is you need to be comfortable with Jake Bridgeman winning the entire thing. Scottie already "won" the "Comcast Business Top 10" — as the best player of the regular season. You can't then manufacture a way for him — or at least one of your other top stars — to win the playoff in dramatic fashion.

One terrible idea I heard was making the 3 "playoff" events one long tournament, and still cut the field from 70 to 50 to 30. Using that logic, Scottie would be -30 with a 5 stroke lead over Tommy Fleetwood (which might as well be 100 strokes), and a 13 stroke lead over Rickie Fowler! That's worse than the -10 starting strokes of the previous format. Nobody is catching Scottie with a 13+ stroke lead, so why watch the event?

Match Play might produce some "dud" winner, but at least there would be intrigue. We don't even talk about the prize pool anymore, because it long ago quit mattering to the public.

So I'm rooting for the Bridgeman this week.

Good luck!