Today marks the beginning of the 19th edition of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, an idea PGA Tour officials conceived in 2007 in the hopes that the game’s biggest names would continue playing deep into the late summer and early fall. Ironically, then, the biggest story at this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship is about one of the tour’s biggest star, Rory McIlroy, deciding not to tee it up in Memphis. The Northern Irishman, second on the FedEx Cup points list, already has spots in the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship (plus $10 million in bonus money) locked up due to his regular-season success, allowing him to send his regrets to TPC Southwind.
Mind you, the potential for such a scenario is just what legendary golf writer Jaime Diaz foreshadowed in a Golf Digest feature that ran in our August 2007 issue. Under the headline “The Tour’s New Race: The PGA Tour needed a late-season spark, and it’s betting that a $35 million playoff bonus is the answer,” Diaz Diaz the tour’s launch of the Playoffs. In the article, he noted: “The tour is betting that all that cash, competition and presumable glory will get the game’s top names to stay on full go at a time of the year they’re used to winding down.”
(Golf Digest+ members get access to the complete Golf Digest archive dating back to 1950. Sign up here.)
Since then, the overall FedEx Cup bonus pool has swelled to $100 million, Yet McIlroy, a three-time FedEx Cup winner, is forgoing this week for the third time in his career—and could forgo the next if he wanted as well. He’s the only player among the top 70 not playing this week, and there are no alternates. A tough break for Davis Thompson, who finished at 71st in the FedEx Cup standings following the Wyndham Championship.
Even in perhaps the lightest sports spot on the schedule—MLB dog days, NFL training camps just getting underway, NBA and NHL still a month-plus from preseason—golf’s playoffs still lack serious buzz. And no amount of money—or extra points or format changes (the tour has ditched the “starting strokes” format after six tries)—seems likely to get golf fans to care more. Diaz’s words 18 years ago proved prophetic on this front.
“But relevance is far from guaranteed,” he wrote. “Golf fans —and top players, for that matter—are long past being impressed by sheer money. That the FedEx Cup will provide the biggest performance-based payout in sports will barely register in a game so drenched in lucre.”
There is some hope for the coming weeks, though. Scottie Scheffler is set to tee it up in all three events as he looks to be the first to win back-to-back FedEx Cup titles and continue adding accolades to an impressive 2025 campaign that has included two major championships. Meanwhile, CBS Sports also reported on Tuesday that the network scored its most-watched golf season in seven years and had its most-streamed golf season ever on Paramount+. Golf Channel, NBC and Peacock will take over for the playoffs as well as the Ryder Cup. Despite the NFL and college football seasons looming, the presence of Scheffler and the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, and all the ensuing drama that comes with that, has golf poised for a strong late summer and early fall.
Still, though, no McIlroy remains a glaring black eye for the FedEx Cup Playoffs as a whole, especially should he go on to win the Tour Championship, a very likely scenario given everybody will be starting at even again at East Lake. In Diaz’s piece, former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said players would be “kidding themselves” if they think they could skip one of the playoff events and still win the FedEx Cup. Almost 20 years later and the tour’s golden boy might do just that.
