FedEx Cup Winner
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The list of winners in the FedEx Cup has been impressive. Tiger Woods took home the trophy the first time it was offered in 2007 and again in 2009, after Vijay Singh. Jim Furyk grabbed the $10 million first prize in 2010 and Haas triumphed last year. Of the 20 FedEx Cup playoff tournaments, Woods has the most victories with three while Singh, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Dustin Johnson and Camilo Villegas have each won two.
It was at the 2005 Tour Championship that commissioner Tim Finchem said the FedEx Cup would begin in 2007. “We’re the only major sport that doesn’t have a stronger finish than our regular season, a playoff system,” Finchem said at East Lake back when the Tour Championship was still played in November. Finchem also said the playoff would be “something that creates more compelling television for our television partners.”
The idea was to generate a team sport-like playoff buzz and the accompanying spike in TV ratings experienced by baseball, football and basketball in the post season. “You can see that in each and every sport, there is a multiple of somewhere between two and four times the average rating position from the playoffs,” Finchem said, overpromising at the time that the FedEx Cup playoffs would have a similar impact.
The problem for the PGA Tour, however, is that golf was already getting that spike in TV ratings, it’s just that it comes in events not owned by the tourthe four major championships. In fact, the five most lucrative events in the competitive game are not owned by the PGA Tour: the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, PGA Championship and Ryder Cup.
“I don’t think it’s perfect, but the job it was supposed to accomplish was to get the top players for the year out there playing after the PGA Championship, and it’s done that. That’s a definite check in the box.”
Stewart Cink
If the FedEx Cup has fallen short in any area it is in the area of ratings, which have increased but not spiked. “From a ratings perspective, it is difficult to compare ’06 [the year before the FedEx Cup started] to ’11 because you have different events and different networks,” Votaw says. “But if you look at cumulative reach, we’re up close to 30 percent.”
When Finchem revealed the plan for the FedEx Cup, it was not universally embraced by a tour membership that tends to be conservative and resistant to change. The points system was seen as overly complex and, in the beginning, vague. There was also concern for the future of those tournaments that came after the Tour Championship, which was moved from November to September.
“There was a lot of skepticism when it first came out,” Mickelson said recently. “‘We knew that it was a good thing in that it got the best players in the world to compete against each other four additional weeks. We were not sure how it was going to evolve, but now it’s really become a staple of the PGA Tour and something that the players really look forward to and strive for.”
Woods was among the early skeptics. “I’ve met with Tim five times, and I’ve heard five different things,” he said late in 2005 about his discussions with Finchem on what the 2007 schedule would look like. “It’s four tournaments out of the year. There’s nothing wrong with it the tour is trying to create interest in a part of the season that has no interest but it all comes down to what is important to you.”
In 2005, Robert Gamez called the FedEx Cup plan “the worst thing for golf ever. There are so many good events. Greensboro has been around for how long? San Antonio has been around for 80-plus years. How can you make these tournaments obsolete? It’s going to kill the fields.”