So awesome that "playoffs" started, yet no thread

[BrunoThePug]

The entire idea of "playoffs" in golf is just silly. I keep hearing people talking about "all the other sports have playoffs...", good for football/basketball/baseball. Golf is not that sport, it has it's own traditions.

I think the whole thing is a misguided attempt at increasing the popularity of golf by making it more like other sports. But by doing so you offend/putoff all of the people who actually enjoy watching golf in it's current format. You're not going to get joe average who loves his local NFL team interested in golf by trying to trick him into thinking that there is some exciting playoff series.

Add in the fact that the whole thing sounds more confusing than it needs to be and I can see this becoming one of those "Sports Follies" things you'll read about 5 years from now. "Remember those stupid playoffs on the PGA tour?!?".

[LeadingMan]

I think people realize "it is what it is." I know the golf channel is hyping the hell out of it and predicting the end of life because Tiger is skipping the first week but i don't think people are fooled. I don't think anybody is expecting this to compare to the playoffs of any major sport and most people are waiting for a couple of events to play out before criticising the idea. Truth is there are a lot of obsticles and it will take a few years to figure everything out.

I am interested but I just didn't know if a thread should be started here or in sporting events.

[black knight]

I really don't know what I think about all this.

1) Match play: I love match play, but they already have the world matchplay championships...so why another one?

2) Resetting points: normal sports have seedings based on season performance, so I suppose the scaled resetting of points is meant to reward the high performers...but I think that the point disparities are WAY too large for how many points the winner will make. However, they've created an increasing scale of points for the latter weeks to perhaps make up for it...problem is only a handful of players even make it that far...so it's a REALLY uphill battle for anyone in the bottom 70 positions, which seems a bit unfair.

3) I'm still gonna watch because I like watching fields full of the very best players.

[FireStorm]

In response to the above post, regarding resetting the points, it appears that the field for NEXT week is pretty easy to determine. Quick math and a look at the full leaderboard suggests that at least 8-9 of the 24 people going home after the Barclays have already been determined (either by being +120 and not showing up or close to 120th and missing the cut). By end of today most of these 24 will have already been decided, leaving little drama for the weekend for the aspect of moving on.

Biggest move at the moment appears to be Rich Beem, currently in the clubhouse tied for 2nd, he's about 12 spots out right now.

[vanwely]

I am a fairly consistent golf watcher but the format seems too difficult to work. It seems that most of the bottom guys can't advance even to the next week without winning the whole tournament.

[black knight]

Well, Tiger gets 10k points, and every place down takes 250 off. So there's 24 people to miss x250 points = Last place player needs 1k points to move on.

[roy_miami]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the whole thing is a misguided attempt at increasing the popularity of golf by making it more like other sports. But by doing so you offend/putoff all of the people who actually enjoy watching golf in it's current format. You're not going to get joe average who loves his local NFL team interested in golf by trying to trick him into thinking that there is some exciting playoff series

[/ QUOTE ]

I think its also an attempt to force the big guns to play more tourneys. It kind of says something about the state of the game where the favorite says "no thanks" to $10 mill.

[ntnBO]

[ QUOTE ]
The problem is that everybody knows pro golfers are mostly a bunch of silver spoon rich boy racists who make millions to play a game that most of us pay (too much) to play. The last thing anyone is going to care about is which of these guys gets an additional ten million dollars and some meaningless artificial championship that is just a ripoff of nascar's dumb idea, especially since golf is all about tradition anyway.
Furthermore tiger woods isn't even playing this week, which makes this week's tournament a "B" event even if the other 143 guys did show up.

[/ QUOTE ]
Does anyone besides me think the above is one huge pile of guano? Words just can't do it justice.

BO

[vanwely]

#144 starts off with 84,700 points. Hes got to get to #120 who starts off with 86,500 points so he has to get at least 1800 points. They give you 2000 for finishing 5th. So you have to finish about 6th. Pretty tough. Even more extreme next week if you barely make it to the top 120.

[K-Slay]

Never mind.