PGA Tour The Barclay's leaderboard http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/the-barclays/leaderboard.html
It's time to begin the PGA Tour's playoffs, called the FedEx Cup playoffs, and if you didn't know, the top 125 players on the FedEx Cup standings (money list) start a 4 event 5 week series pairing down to the top 30 down in Atlanta for the Tour Championship.
Fed Ex throws a ton of money at these guys as incentive, for example this week's purse is $8.25m with the winner getting $1.485m and of course the ultimate winner gets the $10m bonus.
My question is do you care ?
Playoff's for team sports is the most exciting time of the season. Stanley Cup playoffs have Canadians up far past their bedtimes watching their favourites, okay Toronto excepted, hanging on every goal, every hit and agonizing over every miss. Basketball, football, soccer.. all the same thing, it's life or death during the playoffs..
But individual sports like golf and tennis are a different story. Britain comes to a standstill during the Wimbledon fortnight, all eyes are on the Masters in the spring, both sports have their majors that provide enormous excitement and drama, why not just leave it at that.
The Ryder Cup is arguably the 3 most thrilling days in sports, the Presidents Cup will keep getting better when the International team starts winning, but these FedEx playoffs create no excitement at all.
In fact apart from those of us who cover golf, and golf fans, many have told me it's almost obscene to have to offer $10m to guys who are already millionaires, living a spoiled, scented life in places most of mere mortals only dream of visiting, to show up and play in their playoffs.
On the other hand they are the best at what they do, and as in all pro sports the best get rewarded beyond your wildest dreams, footballers in the English premier league are getting paid $250,000.. per week!!
But putting the money aside, the playoffs have to provide some excitement and there is absolutely none as they get ready to tee it up at the Plainfield GC in New Jersey this morning.
It is also reflective of our slavish attention to, and the huge shadow that Tiger has cast over this sport for the last 15 years. The ratings for CBS last week at the Wyndham as he tried to win his way here were through the roof, more than the PGA Championship got with Jordan Spieth and Rory and all their hoopla.
Now that Tiger's year is done, so is golf's, and as I have been saying for year's, that is not good for the game.
However the show must go on and for those who care here are the top 125 and their bio's from pgatour.com
Rory is not playing this week and there are 4 Canadians, David Hearn, Nick Taylor, Graham DeLaet and Adam Hadwin in the field.
http://www.pgatour.com/news/2015/08/24/fedexcup-playoffs-field-study.html
Bryan
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