FEDEX CUP WIN = BEST PLAYER OF THE YEAR? NOT HARDLY!

by Doug McAllister

With the Tour Championship in full swing (some pun intended) at East Lake in Atlanta, thoughts turn toward wrapping up the golf year. With that the focus naturally turns to what a FedEx Cup win really means.

A couple of posts ago, I shared thoughts about the excellent article by John Feinstein in a recent issue of Golf World magazine. You will recall that it is Mr. Feinstein's opinion that the PGA Playoffs are — cutting right to the nerve — a sham! As I have considered it, I have come to completely agree.

Think about the top 30 now playing in the culminating event of the PGA Playoffs. Who is there and who really could be classified as a top player — let alone PGA Player of the Year? Okay, we have Phil Mickelson. Kudos to Phil. Big check mark there. We have Ernie Els — new inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame! Congrats! Ditto. Ditto. Jim Furyk, Retief Goosen, Geoff Olgivy and Zach Johnson — all past Major Championship winners as well — are in the field. Check. Check. Check. Check.

Then we have Steve Stricker, a consistent journeyman player who has arguably paid his dues. Check!

And then things start to get really dicey! Many others in the field — chiefly the Dustin Johnsons, the Charley Hoffmans and the Matt Kuchars — are here as "lottery winners." Face it, they got lucky by winning Playoff event that dumped unreasonable jackpots of FedEx Cup points on players who, given regular season play, might have been lucky to be included in the Tour Championship field at all!

Sadly, the result of all of this is that the PGA has transparently become the latest sports organization to almost completely sell its soul to Mammon! Mammon? You know, filthy lucre, "The Almighty Dollar." Mammon!

And with all due respect to the players, the fault is not theirs. They belong to a sports association that says "Here's how it will be" and that's it. None would be expected to walk away from the lottery any more than any of us would be expected to slam our front door in the face of the Publisher's Clearing House representative standing there with a check as big as the door itself! So on they go.

What is left, though, is the sad reality that each of us, as golf fans, may be required to consider the year's final results with a monstrous asterisk floating in the back of our minds. Regardless of who wins the FedEx Cup, along with its inflated paycheck — unless, of course, Phil or Ernie or Retief manages a miracle finish at East lake — each of us is left to "qualify" the results. I can hear it all now. Something like this: "Yeah, Matt Kuchar is a good golfer. Wonder if he'll back up this year with a Major?"

An unfair sentiment? A consummately fair sentiment!

It was another World Golf Hall of Famer, golf writer Herbert Warren Wind, who stated in 1954, "A golfer's true greatness must always be measured by the number of Major Championships he wins." Hear, hear! Currently, despite the questionable marketing efforts of the PGA, the FedEx Cup is not recognized as a Major Championship. And — unless the PGA gets its act together and works out a system that fairly and accurately recognizes appropriate annual golfing achievements that warrant an invitation to the Playoffs and result in participation in the Tour Championship — here's hoping it never will be!

But, I'm abandoning my favored mantra that nothing that the PGA does matters to the heart and soul of Golf or that of each individual golfer. Apologies. After all, I'm only human.

But, keeping the proper golfing perspective in mind, take up your clubs, smell the grass and listen to song of the meadow larks that love a golf course nearly as much as you do and get out there and...

Hit 'em Long and Straight!