Changing course

A blockbuster end to the PGA Tour season. A season-long points competition. A bonus worth five times the typical first-place check.

If that sounds like the FedEx Cup, turn back the calendar to the age of persimmon woods and sansabelt pants.

This was the Vantage Championship in 1986, and it was designed to give golf a compelling finish. That became the precursor to the Tour Championship, which soon became a tournament for the rich to get richer at the end of a very long year in golf.

Enter the FedEx Cup, the biggest shake-up in golf during Tim Finchem’s 13 years as commissioner.

For the last 50 years, the golf season has been defined by four major championships that begin in April with the Masters and end in August with the PGA Championship. The FedEx Cup is a points race that starts with the opening tee shot at Kapalua and concludes with four “playoff” events that start next week outside New York.

The winner gets $10 million, which the tour touts as the richest prize in sports.

Phil Mickelson compared it with a new event in 1934 called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament, which later became known as the Masters and now ranks among the most prestigious in golf.

“There’s a good chance the FedEx Cup will one day have that same allure,” Mickelson said. “There’s also a chance that four years from now, it will be a flop. I don’t know.”

Even before the first shot in the playoffs, the tour lost its hope of all the stars competing four weeks in a row. Tiger Woods, the No. 1 player in the world, said he would sit out the first tournament at The Barclays because he was tired from winning a World Golf Championship and the PGA Championship in consecutive weeks.

“My body is spent and I need a break,” Woods said.

Under this cloud of uncertainty, the FedEx Cup heads toward a conclusion when The Barclays starts Aug. 23 at Westchester Country Club. Only 144 players qualify for the “PGA Tour Playoffs.” Week by week, the field will be whittled down until the top 30 reach Atlanta for the Tour Championship at East Lake.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how everything holds up,” Woods said earlier this month. “It’s a lot of golf later in the year.”

To make it happen, Finchem overhauled a schedule that had been virtually the same for more than 20 years.

He took two events from the middle of the summer and crammed them into the four-week stretch that comprise the playoffs. He moved five events from the heart of the schedule and stuck them in the fall, after the FedEx Cup is over, knowing they would have minimal relevance and weak fields. And he persuaded FedEx to pour $40 million into the plan, hopeful the best players would buy into it.

The idea was for golf to be compelling beyond the majors, and before football takes over American sporting interests. The Tour Championship ends Sept. 16, seven weeks earlier than last year.

“The reason other sports find it easy to define their seasons is because it’s always about the end,” Finchem said when he first started to put together the pieces of the FedEx Cup. “Not only do we have a weak ending, it’s overshadowed by spikes of interest you have from big tournaments. We need a culminating event that’s special and that you have to play hard to get into.”

Despite a massive marketing blitz, players are still slow to explain how it works.

“I don’t know nothing about the FedEx Cup,” Boo Weekley said. “I just know I’m playing golf, and that’s all that matters to me.”

Tour officials have said the top 15 in the FedEx Cup standings have the best chance of winning, and they were hopeful it would lead golfers to play more during the regular season. But none of the top players altered their schedules.

In some respects, the FedEx Cup will have been a success no matter who wins.

It is rare to see so many top players at the same tournament once the majors are over. Mickelson, Singh, Ernie Els, Adam Scott and British Open champion Padraig Harrington are among those who plan to play them all.

But those who play poorly might not be around very long.

The field at The Barclays will be cut to the top 120 players for the Deutsche Bank Championship. The top 70 will get into the BMW Championship in Chicago, with the top 30 advancing to the Tour Championship.