FedEx cup: even luxury isn’t perfect
It is human instinct to complain. Complaining is like a reflex action, one just has to do it. Regardless of how luxurious or perfect their lives are, golfers need a reason to complain about everything. With the FedEx cup final coming up, it’s the perfect
opportunity for the players to let all complains out.
They won’t look at the German-built luxury cars they drive to the tournaments. Not just any plain tournaments. A couple of technical swings by them earn these golfers millions of dollars. It’s not really a harsh thing when people say that celebrities really
need reality checks sometimes.
For some people, winning the FedEx cup is no way near the same as winning a major. It was never really mean to be. All the majors of the PGA championship finished a month ago. By that time, mostly everyone lost interest in the game. People wouldn’t have
done so if they knew what was coming next. What was next? Only three tournaments featuring the best players on the PGA tour.
Some people don’t really quite understand what the FedEx cup is about. That’s alright. If they don’t understand something, they should learn it. A tournament in which Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker and Ernie Else are all competing is like making
a movie with all the Oscar winners together. In other words, it’s a special and a pretty important event which only happens once a year.
The Tour Championship set to take place next week will bring an end to the FedEx cup. The Championship will take place at the East lake Golf Course in Georgia. With thirty players competing, this championship will showcase all who have played great. Players
like Charley Hoffman, who showed their best late in the year, will play side by side with those who were amazing the whole season like Jeff Overton.
The winning price for the FedEx cup champion is ten million dollars. If a player has made it to the Tour championship, no matter what happens during the game, he will not go home empty handed. Even if the last player on the 30 man list comes in last place,
he will still get $120,000 from the purse and $175,000 from the bonus pool. That is still a lot of money.
Even with such amazing benefits, those who played the BMW Championship at Cog Hill last week were still complaining about the golf course. Stewart Cink called the place a mess. World number two, Mickelson, indirectly taunted the course by praising the Butler
National where he competed on Wednesday instead of attending the pro-am. Clever Mickelson didn’t however mention that Butler National, which is a privately run organization, has an upkeep budget three times larger than publicly run Cog Hill’s.
Not only were they not happy with the venues of the play offs, but also the players in FedEx cup had issues with the points system. The points are five times the value when the play off starts, this creates the precariousness that many thought the system
required. This way, it awards those who have impressive weeks and isn’t very harsh on those who have been good all year long. It’s not perfect and it doesn’t seem like it will ever be.
Some players like Kevin Streelman have benefitted from it. Many think he didn’t deserve to be playing in the Tour Championship at East Lake. His best finish in the whole year was when he tied third in Puerto Rico and was at No. 102 in the standings. With
a turn of luck, he tied for third at Barclays and even though he landed in 45th position in the next two play-offs, Streelman still made it to the top thirty.
For others like Ian Poulter, who was rarely victorious at the Match Play championship in February began the play off at No. 49 and ended with the BMW championship at No 39. Poulter commented on his twitter, ‘Are the playoffs any good?’ Well Ian, it looks
like they weren’t very good for you.
This FedEx cup as it ends brings out the snob in many of golf’s leading personalities. Everyone agrees that the golfers sometimes do need to step out of their luxury world and look at the world from a sensible and humble perspective.
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