It's down to the wire for the FedEx Cup title

Mike Dudurich

Posted 2009-09-23

If it wasn’t so sad, it would almost be laughable.

The PGA Tour, with healthy contributions from FedEx, has worked tirelessly to make the FedEx Cup the raging success it seemed to be when it was put together at Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

This year’s version comes to a conclusion this week at East Lake Golf Club in suburban Atlanta and it has survived yet another season of wacky points calculations, reshuffling, and a still-skeptical world of golf fans as to the validity of this season-end money grab for the best players on the PGA Tour.

And, once again, Mother Nature has thrown another high, hard one under the chin of the event. This year, it comes in the form of the kind of rains not seen since that Moses fella was in the ark-building business.

This Donald Ross beauty absorbed an almost unbelievable 11.3 inches of rain over the last seven days, including almost four inches at the beginning of the week. That’s a lot of rain, just like the 100-year drought that baked the club to a perfect toasty brown in 2007 was a lot of heat. It’s almost unthinkable two such weather extremes would inflict themselves on a single event in three years.

The show will go on, however, starting Thursday morning. Thanks to the installation of a SubAir drainage system – popularized by Augusta National Golf Club several years ago during a particularly rainy Masters, the elite field of 30 players will have a reasonable place to play.

"The first fairway was a lake," said Mark Russell, vice president of Rules and Competition for the PGA TOUR, as he gave his mid-week assessment of the course. "It was hard to look at, to tell you the truth."

SubAir did the heavy lifting (or draining) and the East Lake grounds crew put in mega-hours repairing washed-out bunkers and helping to eliminate whatever standing water remained. And those putting surfaces, which consisted of burned-out grass, dirt or a combination of both in 2007, appear to be in very good shape.

“It's awesome compared to what it could be," Russell said. "If we played somewhere that didn't have that much drainage it would be a total quagmire. But you walk down the first fairway and you don't get any casual water."

As for the tournament itself, well, it’s really a simple thing.

The 30 players in the field are playing for a purse of $7.5 million, with the winner getting $1.35 million of that.

The top five players in the field – Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Zack Johnson and Heath Slocum -- can win the FedEx Cup with a victory. The other 25 players have mathematical chances to win, but a victory doesn’t guarantee them the Cup.

An interesting way to set up the climactic event of a four-tournament playoff, but while it’s still on the back burner of most sports fans’ minds at this time of year, the players are starting to like it more and more.

"I like it," said Stewart Cink, one of the year's four major winners all of whom qualified for the FedEx finale for the first time since its inception in 2007. "It rewards you for playing well in the regular season and even more for playing well in the playoffs. Every tournament is meaningful. So I think it's good.

“I think the skeleton we have right now of the major part of the system will stay in place. There probably will be some more changes, but I think this year is closer to what the intent was when we first started out."

It’s hard to believe that Tiger Woods won’t find his ‘A’ game or squeeze every ounce out of his ‘B’ game to add to his gaudy portfolio. But it was also hard to believe that Heath Slocum, who barely got into the field of 125 for the Barclay’s at 124, won the Barclays and has continued his good play to the point that he has a one-in-five chance to win it all this weekend.

If you’re interested, you can check out how it plays out on the Golf Channel Thursday and Friday and NBC on Saturday and Sunday.

Oh, and by the way, the references above about rainfall on East Lake paled by comparison to what the Atlanta region in general suffered.

Widespread destruction, at least seven deaths, washed out roads, flooded homes, down trees and felled power lines have left a tremendous impact of misery, making the condition of a golf course much more trivial.

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About Mike...
As a sports writer for over 35 years, Mike Dudurich has seen a lot of great things, covered spectacular events, but his passion is, and has been golf. He recently ended a 29-year career at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and will now be a frequent contributor on GolfGearReview.com. Mike hosts a weekly golf radio show on 1250 ESPN in Pittsburgh from the beginning of April through the end of August. The show airs Saturdays from 8-9 a.m. and can be heard online at http://stations.espn.go.com/stations/espnradio1250/show?showId=insidepghgolf - Listen to Mike Here!.

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