With Rory McIlroy skipping the opener, does the Tour have a playoff problem? | Golf Channel Podcast

In this week’s edition, the guys dive into Rory McIlroy’s decision to skip the first event of the FedExCup playoffs, debate the best path forward for the playoffs, and discuss the players feeling the most heat around the top-50 bubble. #golf #pgatour #golfchannel

Chapters:
(00:00): It’s the most wonderful time of the year?
(02:00): Diving into Rory McIlroy’s decision to skip the playoff opener in Memphis
(09:00): What can be done about this postseason loophole
(16:00): Players around that top-50 bubble feeling the most heat this week

» Subscribe to Golf Channel: https://www.youtube.com/golfchannel?sub_confirmation=1
» For the latest news around golf: https://www.nbcsports.com/golf

Welcome to Golf Channel’s official YouTube channel. We are the #1 destination for everything golf – 24/7. Find golf instruction tips, sneak peeks to our original series, news and tournament coverage. We are part of the NBC Sports Group.

Discover what else Golf Channel has to offer:
Live Coverage on Peacock: https://peacocktv.smart.link/v82e9dl56
Live Scores: http://bit.ly/GCScores
TV Schedule: https://www.nbcsports.com/watch/schedule
Instructional Tips: https://www.golfpass.com/learn
Golf Course Reviews: http://bit.ly/GCCourseReviews

With Rory McIlroy skipping the opener, does the Tour have a playoff problem? | Golf Channel Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/golfchannel?sub_confirmation=1

Hello and welcome into this edition of the Golf Show Podcast with Rex and Lav. If you’re feeling a little bit achy, if you’re coming down with the chills or a cough, don’t worry folks, you simply have FedEx Cup fever. Rex says the start of the PJ tour postseason, the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Supposed to be a field of 70. Instead, it is a field of 69. and Roy Moy, the only player who is skipping. I actually want to start there because according to a golf week report, Peter Malady, who is a part of the PG tour policy board, said that he was quote very concerned with Maroy skipping the playoff opener and they’re already talking on the tour level about a way to close the loophole that would seemingly force him to play in the playoff event. What are your thoughts on this? It is the most wonderful time of the year. We have FedEx playoffs. We have the PJ tour season coming to the end and you and I were just talking about football season starting in less than a month. So, it’s it it is uh it’s magical. It’s it’s everything that we want for most of the year. I don’t even like football season like six weeks in like you do because you’re a Georgia fan. So, you’ve got something I’m also a fantasy football die hard. I love I love all fantasy football geared up. We have multiple leagues we’re getting geared up about. I’m a UCF fan. I don’t have a lot to cheer about when it comes to after about the first six weeks. So, this is the the best time of the year. There was actually something said along those lines when it comes to Roy Maroy on our round table on Monday with you and Aean in studio and it was myself and Taylor Zara and I didn’t get a I couldn’t get the sausage finger up quick enough when when Taylor made a mention about and we were talking about Rory and skipping the first event. I think my take was I’m not surprised. I’m not sure this is a headline. We’ve been talking about this it seems like since the spring and I understand why he’s doing it. It makes perfect sense with under the new system. It doesn’t matter if you show up at East Lake 30th or first. All you have to do is play the best four rounds of the week and you win the FedEx Cup title. Now, that means something different now for obvious reasons. And I think the tour sort of slid the resources around to reflect that. That Scotty Sheffield just got paid a whole lot of money for winning the quote unquote regular season. $18 million, Rex. $10 million for the FedEx Cup and $8 million from the Comcast business top 10. And I was just talking with someone from the tour about this and the idea is there’s going to be a year probably not so far from now where someone shows up at Windham with that number in mind. Scotty didn’t. Scotty didn’t show up at Windom. He wouldn’t have showed up at Windham even if it was close. He’s not going to do that. But I can imagine that race coming down to the last regular season event. Again, adding another level of intrigue, adding new storylines, which I think is only good for the PGA Tour and golf. What Taylor said that got my radar up was about Brian Rolap, the new CEO that just started this month at PGA Tour and PJ Tour Enterprises. And as someone who came from the NFL, Taylor’s take was we have to find some way, and I even jotted it down in my notes, to get some sort of guaranteed contracts. And I don’t know if that’s what Peter Malady was referring to in the golf week piece, but certainly it’s something you’ve talked about. PGA Tour does not control labor like you did in the NFL and really every other professional sport. I understand where that idea is coming from. What I couldn’t get in because Aean had to get to break apparently much quicker than I thought it was was the idea that Brian Rolap also understands that what he doesn’t want is another phrase, collective bargaining agreements, unions, none of it. Like I’m sure the tour does not want to have to deal with that. You can’t dictate where and when these players play unless you do want to go to that type of model but that type of model has all types of pitfalls and I don’t think even with rollap in charge even with the idea that he is going to be cutting edge that he is going to innovate that he is going to change the tour and the business model of the tour I we grant all that and we said he won the press conference right out of the gates and I’m sure that he’s doing a good job sitting in the big chair for the last week or so but I don’t think that’s the direction he wants to go at least not out of the gates. Yeah, that certainly poses a lot of complications. Brian Ro is probably expected to meet with the media uh at the Tour Championship uh in a couple weeks time. I’m sure he would likely be asked about that, particularly with Aean uh in the room himself. We’ve been talking, Rex, about players skipping events in the FedEx Cup playoffs since the first FedEx Cup playoffs back in 2007. I mean, Tiger Woods used to skip because there was no benefit of him playing. remember Furick had that u disqualification because he misses he overslept and misses tea time. Uh Webb Simpson himself who was also a member of the PG tour policy board one year skipped I believe it was the BMW championship to prioritize rest and recovery in trying to uh make sure that he played his best the tour championship. So if anyone sort of empathized with what Roy Mroy is doing right now I think it would be him. I don’t think that you can make it mandatory and I don’t think you can make it compulsory to have the attendance and and here’s why. They’ve already tried that as it relates to the elevated events. It was two years ago all of a sudden Rory missed even though he was going to miss out on three or four million dollars. It did not deter him either way. As it relates to Rory in particular, like this is the fourth marquee event that he has missed. If you’re looking at the century, the heritage, um he also missed the memorial and now the first event of the fet cups, he’s more than able to do that. I I sort of view what he is doing in Memphis sort of the equivalent of a first round buy. And if you play well enough throughout the regular season that you can seemingly afford to miss a week and bank on your talents and your skills and a short field going up against them, 50 players of the BMW and 30 the tour championship. If you still think that you can, you know, squeeze the most out of those weeks and finish high up on the FedEx points, more power to you. I’m honestly surprised that more players have not followed Roy Mroy suit, not the other way around where I’m sort of bashing him because I don’t I don’t understand that logic at all. If if anyone should have missed, it probably was Scotty Sheffller. This is a player who has been going through it over the past couple months. the majors, the signature events, they’re all condensed in a very small period of time. He just won the Open Championship, savoring and relishing that most likely for more than two minutes like he’s done in the past. But now you have three weeks in the playoffs that are going to be very hot, very sultry, very humid, very taxing on the body. He’s in a position, Scotty, is at number one where even if he finishes dead last this week, he still cannot be overtaken by number three separ,000 points going to the winner and Scotty’s advantage over SE is more than 2,000. I’m a little surprised Scotty’s not doing it. Again, I commend him for doing it. I’m sure he understands the importance of playing in the playoffs, but I don’t think Rory should be criticized for missing out when he has essentially earned the equivalent of a first round buy. And I don’t want to put my head in the sand here. This is FedEx. Like the St. Jude is an event that’s been on the schedule for a long time. It became a playoff event. It became what the tour wants to be the cornerstone of the playoffs going in because of FedEx and the relationship that the tour has with that company. The seasonl long race is financed by FedEx. Let’s don’t ignore that idea. However, I also made the counterargument on Monday’s round table that if you were to do a costbenefit of analysis and tell me is Roy Maroy going to add more to playing Memphis that as you pointed out has every player except for one, every top player except for one in the field this week at TPC Southwinds or what he was able to do pairing with Shane Lowry at the Zurich Classic. I know that is not an applesto apples comparison, but I had covered New Orleans that event for a long time. I had never seen the amount of buzz that Rory created coming off that Masters victory, coming into town, deciding to defend his title with his best friend. And I’m sure that was just a one-off. But if you look at it from the macro point of view, and you say which one impacted the tournament more, I would say new New Orleans by a mile. And I think you could also say the same thing about Rory going the rest of the season. This is these decisions made. Canada’s a great example as well, but not even those these decisions aren’t made in a silo. He’s going to play the Irish Open on the European tour. He’s going to play the BMW PGA Championship, their flagship event on the DP World Tour. He’s probably going to play Dunnh Hill, I believe. He’s going to play India. He’s going to play Australia. He has a lot of golf, including the RDER Cup left to be played this season. So, I don’t think whatever loss FedEx is feeling without h being in the field. You can write that off, too. What he is doing is better for professional golf overall. It is interesting because I’ve seen some criticism that Rory essentially helped create these elevated events, right? And I it’s you obvious it’s inaccurate to lump the playoff opener in with these signature events. Yeah. Because it’s it’s a it’s a playoff event. But if you look at sort of the three marquee events that he has missed out in the signature events, he was part of that Delaware meeting in which the idea was to get the best players together more often for big money and and and sponsors and tournaments and fans all know where the best players are going to be. I I get that. But there’s two solutions to me, Rex. One, pair down the regular season schedule to make essentially every event a signature event. That way he’s not, you know, you’re playing a schedule of 15 to 20 events. everyone knows where they’re going to be. Or secondly, which I think is as it pertains particularly to the playoffs in the postseason, is wipe the points clean. In other words, declare Scotty Sheffller the FedEx Cup champion after the regular season. And now everyone is starting at zero just like all of the other team sports. Roy Mroy would not be skipping Memphis if all of a sudden the points were at zero and he would and he would essentially be eliminated from the playoffs because he did not tee it up. That’s an easy way to get around it. It ensures participation. Then you can have whatever format you want. You could have a legitimate playoff cut where you go from 70 to 50 to 30 and all of a sudden you’re if you’re Rory, you just need to beat 20 players to get the BMW. Now, he wouldn’t have done that last year since he finished second to last and which is a big reason why he’s not playing TB of Southwind this year. But if you’re a Scotty Sheffler or you are another bigname player, you feel pretty good that you can finish in the top 50 of a short field. That’s one way to do it. You could also do some sort of, you know, playoff bonanza where it all trims down into a match point practice. You could do whatever you want. But if you really want your big name stars to be there and if you want to have a sort of quote unquote closing of the loophole, wipe the points clean. Declar Guide the Fed Cup regular season champion and then do whatever you want from a clean slate in the postseason. Two of the things, two of the three things you’ve suggested seem really draconian based on the idea that one player is skipping the first playoff event. This seems like we’re overreaching. This seems like an overreaction on Peter Malnat’s part. And look, he look he was asked a question and he answered it and we all appreciate that as journalists. However, this is one players skipping one event. I know it’s a big event and I know it’s a big player, but let’s don’t overreact because first finding some way to compel to make it mandatory for these players to play in these events kind of breaks the model in a way that I don’t think you need to right now. That seems draconian. The second one is is what you’ve suggested numerous times now. Make every event a signature event. Make them all big. Well, there’s plenty of little events that that means they’re going to go away. And that makes no sense in my mind either. The PGA Tour is a big business, just not a signature event business. So, those two things seem like an overreach based on what we’re talking about. I really love the idea. And as we know, this playoff is in transition. They they’ve said that this year just wants to get us to next year because the the PGA policy board is working on a lot of different things when it comes to the playoffs. It’s the players, by the way, that don’t like match play. You keep throwing that out there and you keep saying and we always fall back on, well, TV and the sponsors don’t like it because they don’t like the idea of a Sunday. Players don’t necessarily know what makes for the most entertaining product. I wouldn’t say the match play makes for the most entertaining product. We’ve had this conversation before. I’ve covered the match play enough, the WC match play before it went away. And more times than not, the best Wednesday in golf led to the worst Sunday in golf because the big names were gone. The media outnumbered the players who were still on property. We’ve also never seen like a western amateur format, though. We’ve only seen like one seed versus 64 seed or like a roundroin type thing where essentially you have a favorite versus an underdog. Well, that that rarely works in 18 hole match play because these are the best players in the world and on any given day you can have a quote unquote upset. That’s why I’ve always preferred sort of the western amateur format, which is where you have stroke play qualifying. You’re getting the very best players that week, which is very likely to be the cream of the crop on a championship test. Those players then go into a matchplay bracket. You are much more likely to get a very starstudded matchplay bracket as opposed to what could potentially happen with a one vers 64 type bracket. Uh perhaps, but I will go back to what most players seem to feel on this. The reason they don’t want match play. Every other week of the year, we decide that tournaments based on 72 holes of individual stroke play. That is the standard. That’s what wins major championships. That’s what wins events. And now suddenly, you’re going to get to the end of the season and you’re going to call this the big finish and you’re going to do something else. That’s why they don’t like it. I understand where you’re coming from. I keep going back to you. I understand you seem to think that western western amateur style format would work there. There is no there is no proof that that’s the case. We’ve never seen that. So try it. Exactly. Golf. I’m not against it. Not against trying it, but I do like the idea of just starting from scratch. That two things it does. It creates a compelling finish for players to show up in Memphis knowing that I at least have to play well enough to get to the next round. And the same thing for the BMW championship. So there is motivation there. It would create a scenario without actually putting it in paper that yeah, you do have to play the match play. I mean, you do have to play the event in Memphis or you’re not going to make it to the second or third playoff event. And that makes sense to me as well. So that one adds up. And since you’ve we’ve already shifted the resources, all of that huge bonus pool has already been shifted to recognize regular season performance, playoff performance, East Lake performance. You’re not giving away anything. Whereas under the old system, everything came down to East Lake. Under this system, you would have sort of incremental places where players could get paid out of that bonus pool and then move on. Yeah, it’s it’s really coming down to to when are you going to to issue the title of FedEx Cup champion and I’m totally with you where I don’t like the idea of having stroke play all season and then you get to the very last essentially the last two days of the season and all of a sudden Yeah. and all of a sudden it’s match play. That is why again I would I would title Scotty Sheffller the Fighters Cup champion after the regular season and have something completely different and fun for this postseason. I know it might sound like semantics, but that’s a way to get around the idea of of oh, we don’t like to do one format and all of a sudden the last two days of the season it’s something entirely different. I think it it’s I I think it’s as simple as doing that. I really do think that that could work, but it’s going to come down to sort of a shifting of their logic and certainly a continued shifting of the resources. Rex, I don’t know if you have the FedEx Cup standings ahead of you, but this is a big week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship because we are narrowing down the field from 70 to 50. That is important, arguably more important than the cut down to the top 70 for the playoffs because those inside the top 50 of course are fully exempt on the PJ tour to 2026 into all of the signature events. We have seen a good number of a good amount of churn I should say. Last year it was 31 of 50 players uh who had sort of retained their status. This year as of right now as we sit on the eve of the FedEx St. championship. We have 29 players who have retained their status. That’s right where the PJ tour was projecting two and a half years ago. They wanted a 6040 retention to churn rate. Do you feel like that’s enough? Do you feel that that’s right? And are there any players in particular around that bubble number that certainly have your attention? Uh there’s plenty of players. You look at 48, 49, and 50 of Jordan Speed, William Clark, and Men Wu Lee. That’s going to be fascinating to me going into this week because I would argue as compelling as last week was and I we’ve talked a lot about the the Windham championship and what it now means to sort of focus on different numbers 170 50 30 whatever the case may be. But this is the most important week I would argue of the year if you’re a PGA Tour player and I know that sounds ridiculous but if you’re paying attention to what players can do when they’re playing in the signature events versus what they can’t do you have such an advantage being in those events where there’s virtually no cut. A few of them have a cut, but it’s very small. You have to play really bad to miss the cut at the Memorial or the Arnold Palmer Invitational. They have more points. It really just sets your season up for success. I think now that we’ve had two full seasons to sort of settle in and see how it impacts the list. I do think players put an enormous amount of pressure on themselves this week in Memphis because of that top 50 number. They know that next year’s success is going to eb and flow with this. Unless your name is Jordan Speed or Ricky Fowler or Adam Scott, we’ve talked about in the past, you probably shouldn’t count on any expon sponsor exemptions into those signature events. So, that’s going to factor into this as well. So, I’m I’m going to really enjoy watching the numbers, seeing players try to play their way in, play their way out. This week, we talked about last week kind of felt a little flat because you really only had one player, well, two players, one played the way in, one played their way out of that magic number. This one’s going to be different. I feel like we’re going to have some movement just because of how many points are on display. Last year was three players moved inside the top 50. Three players moved out. You mentioned last week at the Windom just one player. That was actually one more than what happened in 2024. So at least we had some semblance of drama as it related to postseason participation. I’m with you because when you look at those the players who are right around that top 50 and you mentioned the spots exemptions and Jordan Speed got a boatload of them. Ricky Fowler got a boatload of them. Those players Jordan Speed is just inside the number. Ricky Fer is gonna have to make both of us to be clear. Both of us are fine with that. We’re not We have no problem with joining Ricky. We have a problem with the sponsor exemptions. Let’s be clear. Correct. Both of those players are going to have to do something special. Ricky Fowler 64th in the standings. Didn’t have to have a good week. But like a player like Tony Fe now is 60th in the standings. You would think barring some sort of rule change where they don’t have sponsor exemptions in the signature events in 2026 that those players would likely receive again a handful of starts into the signature events as well. You don’t want to put yourself in that position where you’re at the mercy of tournament directors, potentially some of the backlash from fans as well. I I look in particular, Rex, at some players who could really sort of alter their career trajectory by getting into these signature events. And I’m not talking about players who are already exempt on the PJ tour because that’s, you know, that’s the case for a player like an Aaron Ry, right, who who won on the PJ tour uh last year at the Windham Championship. He’s going to be on the PJ tour regardless for the next couple years, but he’s never had a full slate of of starts in the signature events against the very best players on the PJ tour to see what he can do. And so, a player like him at 55, Joe Highmith at 54, Bud Collie, we’ve talked about his miraculous recovery from a a spade of injuries that he’s had over the past half decade or so. He’s right there at 53. Max Grazerman was inside the top 50 last year. his performance at the BMW Championship. Jake Knap, uh, we talked about him a little bit on Golf today on Tuesday. He’s a player who probably thinks, Rex, like he should he should be competing with the FedEx Cup, not just trying to make it inside the top 50 with the chances that he’s had either in Palm Beach, uh, the Rocket Mortgage, the 3M, all of those opportunities to win golf tournaments that he’s let slip by uh, this season. He has never had an entire season of just signature events. one of the rising stars in the PG tour. One of the most exciting players to watch because of his speed and his power. I think a long I think his career could go a long way just by getting inside the top 50 and having access and I don’t think we can overstate how important it is to get inside that top 50 number. And not only can you set your schedule, but you have such an advantage going into next year. And I didn’t answer your question. I was as surprised as probably you are and a lot of people that that churn number that the PGA Tour threw out there before they started the signature event model. I was very dubious. I didn’t understand how that was possible when you essentially had a portion of the PGA Tour playing one tour and everyone else playing another tour. It seemed like everything was going to lean so heavily in the favor of those players. So, I I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised by the math that yes, you have just as many players more or less roughly historically playing the way in as you have playing the way out. Yeah. And I I mentioned this I mentioned this on Tuesday because I I I do think the tour deserves credit because I think you and I were both skeptical as we just mentioned that that wasn’t going to be enough. It’s going to be a close shot. Players are essentially just going to be able to drop anchor and just even if they finished 30th, they’d still do enough to remain inside the top 50. But you look at the the names and the players who have moved inside that top 50 are now in position to sort of alter their career trajectory. You have the obvious names, the players who have won this season, who have had breakout years. I’m thinking players like a Harris English who was already an established player, but he’s had a a really resurgent year. Uh a Ben Griffin, um an Andrew Novak, a Ryan Fox, certainly a JJ Spawn, the US Open champion. Like those are obvious names. They won tournaments. They’ve done a lot in the major championships as well. They have moved inside the top 50 and now are secure. But I think there’s still a place for even players like a Jacob Bridgemond or a Harry Hall or a Sam Stevens. They have not won tournaments, but they’re now being um rewarded for very consistent, reliable play across the entire season. That to me is important. And I think Maverick McNeely deserves a lot of credit for sort of the reorganization of the uh point distribution in signature events where we finished sort of middle of the pack 8th to 20th not necessarily so significantly outweighing let’s say a fifth place finish in a full field event on the PJ tour. it does feel right and you look at the players who have fallen out you’re either injured you know like a Billy Horchel will zurus um a Sahit Thagala missed a bunch of time or you’re slumping a Maxoma a Dunlap an Adam Hadwind those players have all had very disappointing seasons in 2025 and thus they have fallen outside the top 50. All right, that is going to do it for this edition of Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lav Rex and I’ll be back on Sunday night. He’ll be in this exact position. Probably not this exact hotel room, this exact position overlook beautiful Stamford, Connecticut. He’ll be co-hosting the show uh with Aean Lynch next week on Golf Today. I’ll be back home. But we’ll have plenty to discuss the cut down from 70 to 50. The winner and the contenders at the FedEx Staint 2 Championship will likely very very actually very likely get ratioed once again for our takes on the ever evolving US and European Rder Cup picture. Plenty more to get into, including your reader comments. I look forward to doing that on Sunday night. All right, you guys know the drill. mbcupports.com/golf akaolf channel.com. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. We’ll talk to you guys on Sunday night.