Camilo Villegas Wins BMW Championship; Vijay Singh Wins the FedEx Cup

Camilo Villegas’ first career victory at last week’s BMW Championship in St. Louis represented not one, but two significant events.

First, Villegas officially established himself as another one of the PGA Tour’s up-and-coming young stars. 

Villegas’ popularity has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past two seasons and he has come close to winning several times.  But Villegas’ win last week represented his official arrival on the main stage.

Second, with Villegas’ win at the BMW Championship last week Vijay Singh has essentially won the FedEx Cup.

Barring Vijay deciding to stay home next week, missing his tee time, signing the wrong score card or doing anything else that will get him disqualified from the Tour Championship, Vijay Singh has won the FedEx Cup.

All Singh needs to do is complete his four rounds at the Tour Championship and FedEx can put through that $10 million wire transfer to his bank account. 

Singh having the FedEx Cup all but won before the last tournament has even been played brings to light the most fundamental problem with the current FedEx Cup system: the lack of an exciting, climactic conclusion to the ‘Playoffs’.  

Vijay can go out and shoot 100 for four straight rounds and win the FedEx Cup.

Vijay could average 3.5 putts per green at the Tour Championship and still win the FedEx Cup.

Vijay Singh could finish in dead last place and will still be handed the FedEx Cup on the 18^th green at East Lake Golf Club.

The PGA Tour got lucky last year when Tiger Woods did not have the FedEx Cup fully wrapped up heading into the Tour Championship.

Woods happened to win the Tour Championship, which presented a situation where the winner of the Tour Championship just happened to be the winner of the FedEx Cup.

A situation like that is actually very unlikely, and Vijay has demonstrated how most FedEx Cups will likely play out in the coming years. 

What will likely happen next week is that someone other than Singh will win the Tour Championship. 

The PGA Tour and FedEx will then have to hand a trophy to the winner of the Tour Championship and then call up Vijay Singh and hand him the FedEx Cup, no matter where Vijay happens to finish in the tournament.

If that does not represent a broken system, than I don’t what does. You see, golf is a sport, but at the end of the day, the PGA Tour is in the entertainment business.

People are not forced to watch golf.

The PGA Tour is not the only thing on television each weekend, nor does the PGA Tour have a monopoly over the sporting industry.

People do not tune in to watch Tiger Woods because they are golf historians and are interested in watching the history of the game unfold before their eyes.

No, people tune in to watch golf because they find it entertaining.

People tune in by the millions to watch Tiger Woods because he is highly entertaining.

During the month of September, sports fans have baseball, college football, NFL football, NASCAR and golf to choose from.  Not to mention that most people have around 700 other cable or direct TV channels to flip through in the hopes of finding an entertaining movie, show or sporting event.

If potential viewers are not entertained by the product the PGA Tour is offering, they will simply not watch it.

Producing the most entertaining product that will draw the most fans, which in turn draws the sponsors and massive television contracts, is the ultimate business of the PGA Tour.

The current FedEx Cup playoff system is an extreme failure in terms of offering fans the most entertaining possible product. 

I am no expert on television ratings, but I would venture to say that in the week following the Ryder Cup, which is typically one of the most popular events amongst golf fans, very few people will tune in to watch the final FedEx Cup playoff event when Vijay Singh has already won the cup.

Would anyone have watched the Super Bowl last year knowing that no matter what happened, the Patriots would have been handed the Lombardi Trophy?

I highly doubt it. 

The PGA Tour has its first dark week of the season this week, meaning that there is no PGA Tour event schedule in this week preceding the Ryder Cup.

Thanks to Singh’s exceptional play at the first two FedEx Cup events and Camilo Villegas’ breakthrough victory at last week’s BMW Championship, the PGA Tour has been slapped in the face with their worst nightmare: a FedEx Cup that has already been decided before the final event. 

The PGA Tour will have a quiet week to think about how to improve upon this debacle of a playoff system before fans and sponsors start jumping ship.

I know that if I had a massive sponsorship budget that I could allocate to a golf tournament, I certainly would not want to sponsor the Tour Championship knowing that it is very likely that year after year, the winner of the FedEx Cup will essentially be decided before the Tour Championship is even played. 

I cannot think of a worse way to ruin the entertainment value of a sporting event than by having the winner determined before the event is even played.