Whilst the rest of the world continues to adapt to the notion of a “new normal” the elite performers of the PGA Tour might be wondering what all the fuss is about, having been introduced to a bewildering golfing version of the phrase ahead of last year’s Tour Championship.
To be fair to the brainboxes at Tour HQ their concept hoped to grant long-term high achievers an advantage in the final event of the season (not necessarily a bad thing) and also provide the FedExCup Playoffs with a purpose and narrative drive which would naturally incite high drama (because handing the winner a cheque equivalent to the GDP of a small country had proved insufficient to excite the public or, incredibly, the players).
The answer? Ahead of the final event of the season – the Tour Championship – the players rankings would be translated into starting strokes, a solution which, it took no-one very long to work out, would have transformed the 2018 Tour Championship from an epic Tiger Woods triumph into a flat anti-climax.
And although the first edition of Tour Championship 2.0 worked out no differently than under normal circumstances, it is inevitable that sooner or later the final result will be a weirdly unsatisfying mixture of underwhelmed winner, frustrated loser and baffled observers.
It’s also, of course, a thorny problem for punters, effectively handing us an in-running riddle from the get-go. As always, there are possibilities, and here’s how the top ten begin the action this week:
-10 Dustin Johnson
-8 Jon Rahm
-7 Justin Thomas
-6 Webb Simpson
-5 Collin Morikawa
-4 Daniel Berger, Harris English, Bryson DeChambeau, Sungjae Im, Hideki Matsuyama
-3 Brendon Todd, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Reed, Xander Schauffele, Sebastian Munoz
TOUR Championship 2020 Winner – Justin Thomas 5/1
The first and obvious point is that I’m taking on the two leaders which may, at first glance (and possibly all future glances, too) seem a little odd. Johnson and Rahm are, after all, the two men who produced such magic on the 18th green at Olympia Fields on Sunday night, with first the American and then the Spaniard holing double-breaking, long-distance putts of stunning quality to initially force a play-off and then win it.
Before those emotional highs, however, they had been involved in a long and mentally exhausting fight against a course which left many bruised and wounded. If they maintain such standards over the next 72 holes, good luck to them, great effort. But Johnson has had his struggles at East Lake (he was plum last 12 months ago and has carded plenty or poor rounds there) and it’s also true that none of the last ten winners of this final event of the year (admittedly nine of them played under the old rules) had made the top five in his previous start (and eight were outside the top ten).
When we turn to the chasers Thomas makes most appeal after finishing a relatively stress-free T25th last week, ending with his best-of-the-week (68). Then there is his record at East Lake, where he has made four starts and logged nothing worse than ninth with a best of second in 2017.
He must, of course, make up shots on the leaders, but he also starts with shots on most of the field. I fear Webb Simpson, whose results on Bermuda grass greens in the last 15 months are superb, but he’s never quite got to grips with the tee-to-green test at East Lake, whilst Collin Morikawa’s best golf has come on bent grass greens.
Rahm's got momentum, DJ's on a hot streak and Bryson is built for East Lake.
Power Rankings for the entire @playofffinale field.⬇️ https://t.co/HWpu7kJEKr
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) September 1, 2020
A couple of months after the rest of the tour, Rory McIlroy emerged from lockdown last week in Chicago. Admittedly a promising start (he carded 70-69 to tie the halfway lead) was marred by a sloppy Saturday 73, but it was a vast improvement on the four failures to make the top 30 which had preceded it and offered hope that a first top ten since March is within his grasp, even under this week’s rules. In fact, the contrast between his pre- and post-lockdown results is striking: seven top five finishes before, not one in eight appearances since.
East Lake is a good spot for him to break that duck because he has five top tens in six starts, a run which includes victories in 2016 and 2018. To make it a third win seems a very tall task, starting the week seven shots in arrears of Johnson, but he knows how to go low on the course. In fact, in his last 12 laps of the course he has three times carded the lowest score, three times only one man went lower and on yet another three occasions only four did so. In a complex week he can give us a Thursday run for our money.
