FedEx Cup Lessons Learned

Now that the inaugural run of the the PGA Tour's playoff series, currently known as the FedEx Cup, has come to a close, here are some of the things that I've learned:

• Tiger really is "The Man" - It seems like after every time Tiger tees off, some yahoo in the gallery yells out, "You the man!" It turns out that this yahoo was right all along. The FedEx Cup showcased the best player in the universe playing some of the best golf of his career. When Tiger hits fairways, he is virtually unbeatable. The FedEx Cup reaffirmed this emphatically.


• Tiger Woods' swing has changed for the better - During NBC's coverage, Dan Hicks commented that Butch Harmon believed that Tiger was swinging the club better than his phenomenal ballstriking year in 2000. That's not surprising because it appears that Tiger has returned to some of those Butch Harmon swing elements circa 2000. I'm no swing expert, but my eyes have noticed some changes in Tiger's swing over the last several months. He appears to be standing taller and reverting back to Harmon's bread-and-butter two-plane swing. Tiger originally hired Hank Haney to teach him the one-plane swing with the ultimate goal of relieving career-jeopardizing stress on his left knee and to solve his frequent swing flaw of getting "stuck." While the one-plane may extend the life of his rickety left knee, it does little to prevent him from getting "stuck." I think that Tiger has finally come to this realization and he will commit to the two-plane while incorporating certain teachings from Haney. I think that we are all naturally either one or two-plane swingers and that Tiger is a natural two-planer. No offense to Mr. Haney, but Tiger swings the club best on two-planes.


• Phil Mickelson is less of a choker, but he's still the joker - Phil has all the skill and talent to go toe-to-toe with Tiger. However, his mental approach will prevent him from beating Tiger on a consistent basis. Sure, Phil beat Tiger at the Deutsche Bank Championship, proving that he's no longer sitting near the top of ESPN's "Worst Choke Artists" list. However, his constant go-for-broke mentality almost cost him again. He's clearly too stubborn, too arrogant or both to ever relinquish this long-standing behavior. I guess it doesn't bother him because he's always smiling about it.


• The FedEx Cup format is far from perfect - I have a graduate degree in finance from a reputable institution, but even that high-priced education was insufficient for me to understand the FedEx Cup's point system. I can only imagine how the everyday golf fan felt about it. The architects of the FedEx Cup need to revisit the drawing board and devise a better system. Not only was it too complex, it allowed the top golfers to ditch some events altogether without causing much of a penalty. Not only did Tiger not participate in the first FedEx Cup event, The Barclays, but in retrospect he could have skipped the last event, The Tour Championship, and still have hoisted the FedEx Cup. That's a pretty ridiculous scenario for a so-called playoff system.


• Money talks - Usually this time of the year, the world's best golfers have packed it in for the season to watch football. The FedEx Cup's huge purse enticed them back onto the course for some serious competition. Heck, it wasn't until the FedEx Cup's second event that we got to see some head to head competition between Tiger and Phil this year. With all of it's flaws, the FedEx Cup succeeded in this regard.


• The FedEx Cup sure is pretty - One thing that adds legitimacy to the FedEx Cup is its beautiful trophy. Designed and created by Tiffany & Co., it is made of sterling silver and took approximately six months to create. At 15 inches in diameter, it is perfectly sized and shaped to hold all that prize money!

Did you learn anything interesting from the FedEx Cup? Please let me know! Stay tuned as I reveal my recommendations for next year's FedEx Cup in the near future. That means you Mr. Finchem!

Funny Golf Stories

Jason Sobel over at ESPN asked his readers to email him their best golf stories after he wrote about one of his. In a scant 4 days, he received over 500 reader submissions! Jason highlighted the 10 best here. I found the grouchiest story, i.e. the one that would most likely happen to me, to be the one submitted by Dan S. from Goldens Bridge, N.Y.:

In the early '90s, I was a guest at the Shady Oak Club in Fort Worth, Texas. Founded by Ben Hogan, by this time, the elderly Ben would spend his days in the grill overlooking the 18th hole. I was 12-over-par after 17 that day and was feeling good about my round until my approach at 18 found one of the greenside bunkers. I grabbed my sand wedge and as I readied to hit the shot, I noticed that Mr. Hogan was standing at the window watching me. Shaking like a leaf and with a bad case of the nervous sweats, I proceeded to blade the ball and hit it directly into the bunker on the opposite side of the green. I then repeated the performance and ended up about one foot from my original lie in the first bunker. As I readied my third bunker shot, I looked up towards the grill window and watched as Hogan sadly shook his head and turned away from the window, probably wondering who had let this bumbling cretin on his course. To this day, when I'm asked about the quality of my game, I honestly reply that I have a game that disgusted Ben Hogan.

It's a great story and one that can be appreciated by any golfer. However, I still think the funniest golf story is "The Hottest Driver." I still get a chuckle out of that one!

You're Fired!

If there was one tournament that I wish that I could have attended this year, it would have been the Canadian Open. It's not because it featured a particularly strong field, nor that it was an exciting competition. The real reason was to witness the drama that unfolded on the 15th hole during the first round involving Jay Williamson and his caddy. You can read the full story on ESPN, or you can just read the Grouchy Cliff Notes:

1. Golfer flies green
2. Golfer blames caddy
3. Caddy tells golfer to shove it
4. Golfer fires caddy
5. Caddy dumps golfer's golf balls into the lake
6. Golfer hires a new looper from the gallery

How cool would it have been to have seen this happen live and in person?! But the real clincher for me is that Jay only paid his temporary caddy a dozen golf balls for four holes of work! Come on Jay, we all know that you get 'em for free. At least tip the guy a couple of Benjis.

Jackass: Golf Edition

Jackass, the wildly popular TV show and movie series, is one of my guilty pleasures. It's so stupid it's funny. It also evokes memories from my youth because Johnny Knoxville and his crew reminds me of my crazy buddies from high school.

Interestingly, Jackass has inspired a countless number of idiots to videotape their random acts of stupidity. A couple of Jackass wannabes have managed to incorporate golf into a wild stunt:



I don't know who's crazier, the human golf tee or the guy swinging the club. I know that I don't have the cojones to do either.