The FedEx Cup: Where Consistency Has Become the New Winning

Consistency is what all golfers strive to achieve.

That being said, most players attempt to achieve a high level of consistency in order to give themselves more opportunities to win big-time events, most notably the major championships.

But that has all changed in this new era of professional golf.

You can now become the number one player in the world without winning a major.  Heck, it’s quite possible to become the number one player in the world these days without winning at all. Jason Day is currently ranked seventh in the World Golf Rankings with his lone PGA Tour victory coming almost two years ago at the HP Byron Nelson Championship. 

You can even stumble into a $10 million pay day for winning the FedEx Cup while winning just one or even no events during the season.

The Top 5 players in the FedEx Cup standings heading into the Tour Championship can automatically claim the cup and a $10 million pay day with a victory at East Lake Golf Club.

Of those Top 5, three have won only one PGA Tour event this season (Dustin Johnson, Luke Donald and Justin Rose), one player has won two events (Webb Simpson) and one player has yet to win an event all year (Matt Kuchar).

Kuchar could conceivably finish second or third at this week’s Tour Championship and claim the FedEx Cup title while having not won a single tournament in 2011. 

Queue the sweat dripping from Tim Finchem’s brow.

Depending upon what other players do, Johnson, Donald and Rose could also claim the cup with a Top 5 finish while having won just one event all year.

Rose missed the cut at two of the four majors in 2011, tied for 44th at the Open Championship and until his T6 at the Barclays he hadn’t notched a single Top 10 since the Arnold Palmer Invitational back in March.  But based on his lone victory at last week’s BMW Championship, Rose might not even have to win this week in order to claim the FedEx Cup title and a $10 million pay day.

The FedEx Cup was initially created with two men in mind—Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

The PGA Tour and their sponsors wanted to get Woods and Mickelson playing more towards the end of the season.  So they create a scenario whereby the purse and “prestige” were large enough to draw these two superstars out of their offseason hideouts.

However, no intelligent businessman would create a series of tournaments with a $35 million bonus pool without hedging their bets.  So, it came as no surprise when a complicated point system was created in order to give Woods and Mickelson an excellent chance to win the Fedex Cup if they were playing well, but also allow them to advance to the Tour Championship even if they were not playing well towards the end of the season.

That worked for a while when Woods was winning five and six times a year, or when Vijay Singh was winning numerous events.

However, we have now entered an age of parity in golf.  An age where consistency has become the new winning.

Luke Donald has become the number one player in the world while having just three Top 10s in the majors since 2008.

And Matt Kuchar may very well walk away with the FedEx Cup title and a $10 million payday this week without having won a single PGA Tour event all year.

Consistency is what all golfers strive to achieve.  However, a problem begins to arise when consistency starts to become more valuable than winning.

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