FedEx Cup Playoffs: Stop the Complaining

Two weeks ago at the BMW Championship, 70 men competed for $7.5 million purse with no cut.

DJ Trahan finished in last place at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, 26 strokes off the lead, and earned $15,000.

Folks, that as much as most cops, fire fighters, and public school teachers make in six months.

This week, 30 men will be competing for a $7.5 million purse and more than $35 million in bonus money.

All in all, there has been $65 million up for grabs over the past five weeks courtesy of sponsors such as Barclays, Deutsche Bank, BMW, Coca-Cola and of course, FedEx.

Let me repeat that once more: 125 players competing for $65 million.  

You’d think that most of these guys would send cars as Christmas gifts to PGA Tour Commission Tim Finchem and FedEx Chairman Fred Smith rather than complain about everything under the sun for five weeks during the dreaded FedEx Cup playoff run.

Show up for a pro-am or take some time out of your day to attend a sponsor’s event—boy, what a drag. 

99.9 percent of the population would mow the lawns of every man and woman employed by BMW for the chance to compete for $65 million in prize money.

Yet, in this day and age of greed, greed, and more greed, it’s not enough.

Nope, PGA Tour pros have spent the last few weeks complaining about course conditions, the FedEx Cup format, and if you can believe it, having to work three weeks in a row.

Two weeks ago at Cog Hill, Steve Stricker spoke about how he hadn’t seen many smiles lately, referring to the short week between the Deutsche Bank Championship and the BMW Championship and the course conditions at Cog Hill.

No smiles while playing for a $7.5 million purse with another $7.5 million plus $35 million more in bonus money waiting for you the following week?

What would happen if these guys had to work a standard 9-5 job with just 10 vacation days per year just like everyone else? Would they immediately put a bullet in their heads?

Yes, the greens were a LITTLE bit choppy at Cog Hill.

But you’d think that these guys would have a little respect for the fact the Midwest has experienced a brutally hot summer combined with an extreme amount of rain.

Cog Hill (a municipal golf course) brought in renowned architect Reese Jones and paid him millions of dollars to redesign the green complexes and make the course more challenging for the best players in the world after Tiger Woods blistered Cog Hill with a 62 in the third round of last year’s BMW Championship.

And now, get this—it’s too hard for these guys.

“I played really good golf the first two days, and I'm over par,” Phil Mickelson said at the BMW Championship. “I just don't think I'm good enough to play this course.”

"I am going to echo what Zach Johnson told me," Stewart Cink told a few reporters after his second-round 73 at Cog Hill. "That on a scale of one to 10, this course is a minus-3."

My goodness, a $7.5 million muzzle isn’t large enough to keep members of the PCA, Professional Complainers Association, quiet for four days?

Stewart, no one is forcing you to play in these conditions. Yet, if you hadn’t endured such a “wreck” of a golf course, well, then you wouldn’t have earned your $84,000 for finishing NINE strokes off the lead. 

Then we come to the FedEx Cup format.

"I finish in the top 30 on the money list and don't get in tour championship. Are the playoffs any good?" Ian Poulter tweeted after the BMW Championship.

"You take people who have played hard all year and they happen to have a bad couple of tournaments," J.B. Holmes told Golfweek magazine. "I missed the cut and fall from 18th in points to 29th. How is that fair? It's not fair at all."

Ian and J.B., here’s a news flash for you: play better golf when it counts and you’ll be rewarded. It’s as simple as that.

If a football team wins 15 games during the regular season, are they automatically exempt into the Super Bowl?

No. They have to get through the playoffs in order to make it to the Super Bowl.

Could you just imagine a baseball, basketball, or football team asking to be exempt into the World Series, NBA Finals, or Super Bowl based on how they played during the regular season?

If Poulter hadn’t carded a 75 on Sunday at the BMW Championship, or better yet, if he had posted even a single top-10 sometime between February and September, he’d be tweeting about how excited he is to take part Tour Championship.

Holmes’ last top-10 came back in July at the AT&T National and he closed with a horrific 78 to finish 60th at the BMW Championship. Why in the world should this guy be exempt into the Tour Championship?

That would be like Peyton Manning throwing five interceptions in an AFC Championship game and then complaining about how he should still be in the Super Bowl because he threw for 4,500 yards during the regular season.

The PGA Tour is currently struggling with low ratings and sponsors jumping ship faster than you can say TARP.

The tour’s current television deal ends in 2012 and how keen do you think the networks are going to be to shell out millions to televise tournaments that may or may not exist in five years?

Now, not all professional golfers are members of the PCA (Professional Complainers Association), so blanketing the entire PGA Tour with this label would be wrong.

But here’s a small bit of advice to those who do spend their time complaining about everything inside and outside the ropes while still collecting their massive checks each week: keep your mouths shut and simply enjoy all the money and perks you have available to you at the moment, because it ain’t gonna last forever. 

In fact, it might not even last much longer.

For more PGA Tour news, insight and analysis, check out The Tour Report.