‘Perform when it matters most’: Pros dish on Tour Championship changes

If golf fans thought the Tour Championship’s staggered-start format was unnecessary and confusing, they weren’t alone.

Just ask the players.

The PGA Tour announced changes to its Tour Championship and FedEx Cup Playoffs finale on Tuesday, and beginning this year they’ll scrap the “Starting Strokes” format and return to a 72-hole stroke-play event, which is the format the tournament used prior to 2019.

“I think when you’re looking at a golf tournament, I think the best way to identify the best player over the course of a tournament is 72-hole stroke play on a really good golf course,” Scottie Scheffler said Wednesday at the Memorial. “I think when you look at a good test of golf and you got to compete over four days, I think that’s the best way to crown the best winner for that week.”

Before 2019, the PGA Tour would sometimes crown two different winners at the conclusion of the tournament, the Tour Championship winner as well as the FedEx Cup champ (although most years the same player won both). But the double-trophy presentation seemed anticlimactic and confusing — Justin Rose won the 2018 FedEx Cup, although that year is remembered for Tiger Woods winning the Tour Championship — which is what led to the Tour’s Starting Strokes format.

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That, however, brought its own problems. With the field starting at different scores, the format was still confusing for casual fans and seemed like more of a Band-Aid than a solution.

Collin Morikawa would have won the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup title without using Starting Strokes last year. Instead he finished second. He’s not annoyed about that, but he does thing the change is good.

“I think when I’ve started at roughly even par or one under you’re like, man, I just got to ball out,” Morikawa said Wednesday at the Memorial. “Like, I got to go crazy. Hopefully I have four insane days and we’ll see. But now, like every other sport, you have a chance to win essentially your championship. And that’s what you get here.”

Previously, pros were sold the idea that their regular-season success, as well as finishes in the first two or three FedEx Cup Playoff events, helped properly seed them via Starting Strokes in the Tour Championship. Now that angle is changing. The shift seems to be more like a regular season and a playoffs more separate from one another. It’s essentially what you see in other team sports. Both Scheffler and Max Homa, in separate press conferences on Wednesday, brought up the New York Giants beating a then-undefeated New England Patriots team in Super Bowl XLII during the 2007-08 season.

“[The Patriots] had a great year, and they didn’t win the Super Bowl,” Scheffler said. “At the end of the day you have to perform when it matters the most. I think now with the format we have, we have a great format of a 72-hole golf tournament. If I want to win the FedEx Cup, I have to play well at the last week of the season, and it’s just simple as that.”

Homa said the previous format never made a lot of sense to him and approves of the change.

“I really like everyone starting at even,” he said. “It’s still incredibly hard to make it to that final 30. It is the sign of an amazing year. So if you’re there you know you should have a chance at the title, in my opinion. So I like what they have done.

“Again, there’s a million different things you could do, but just starting at zero is easier to digest. It just felt like before if you got to the Tour Championship at even or one under — one year I played great all year and I think I started like six back of Scottie — and it didn’t feel hyper competitive, and it just feels like every year you would end up with two or three people on the weekend that had a chance, and that’s not exciting. So I’m just glad we’re back to golf as we kind of know it, and I think that it will produce a lot more excitement at what should be our most exciting event.”

In addition to the format change, the Tour also announced it will make adjustments to the course setup to encourage more risk/reward moments to increase drama and have winning scores closer to even par.

“I think it being sort of our hardest tournament to qualify for, just being 30 guys and 30 guys after a year-long race, I think it kind of fits to make it not 30-under winning,” Xander Schauffle said. “I think it makes sense to make it difficult. So with that being said, I mean, pin locations, grow the rough, make the fairways smaller. I mean, to start you just make fairways small and grow rough, make greens firm and fast. It’s going to be pretty difficult.”