Playoffs?!
- Dan Hauser
- 18 Aug, 2014
“Playoffs?!”
It’s the famous Jim Mora line that he used in a press conference after a loss. He said to not event talk about the playoffs. Well Jim, sorry to dissapoint but that is exactly what we are going to do.
You see, Camillo Viillegas lifting the Sam Snead trophy presented to the winner of the Wyndham Championship signified the end to the 2013-2014 PGA Tour regular season. It also signified the start of the four week stretch run that is the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
Over the next four weeks the top 125 PGA Tour pros will compete to try and move on to the next week as the field size shrinks and the stakes get higher. The playoffs kick off this week with The Barclays and will feature a full 125 man field. The field will shrink to the top 100 golfers next week at the Deutsche Bank Championship, 70 at the BMW Championship in three weeks, and finally just 30 at the Tour Championship. When all is said and done, one golfer will earn the FedEx Cup and the special $10 million prize that comes along with the honor.
There are always many story lines that come with the playoffs. In addition to golfers being eliminated from contention each week and the fight for the final spots, the 2014 bring some additional story lines starting with the man at the top of the standings heading into the start of the playoffs, Rory Mcllroy.
The Palm Beach Gardens resident will enter the first playoff event on quite a winning streak. In the past month Rory has won the Open Championship, the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and the PGA Championship, all in consecutive events. Mcllroy, who won two of the four FedEX Cup events in 2012 seems to be poised to make it four in a row and finally add that elusive FedEx Cup title to his trophy case.
The fact that this is a Ryder Cup year means that there are more than just five times the normal FedEx Cup points on the line, at least for the first two events. That’s because American Captain Tom Watson will be making his final three capatain’s picks on September 3rd, meaning that any American golfer not already on the team has The Barclays and Deutsche Bank Championship to show that he is worthy of one of those spots. That includes Webb Simpson, Brandt Snedeker, and Jupiter’s Keegan Bradley who were all on the 2012 American Ryder Cup Team but found themselves without an automatic birth this time around and will have to rely on a captains pick.
All this leads to an exciting four week stretch to conclude the PGA Tour season and as Jim Mora once famously said, the “playoffs?!”
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About Dan Hauser
As an avid golfer and sports enthusiast, Dan has had a passion for sports starting at a very young age. Dan’s other passion has always been writing. Since the time he could write, he has always enjoyed sharing information with people and telling stories through writing. In middle school he combined his two loves by joining the school newspaper in the sports department.
