How does Jon Rahm vs. Jordan Spieth sound? Would you watch Wyndham Clark vs. Collin Morikawa? Or what about Xander Schauffele vs. Tony Finau?
In other words, what if the Tour Championship was a match play? How interesting would this next week at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta be then?
The PGA Tour’s lone match-play event, the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, was played in Austin for the final time in March. There is no upcoming match play tournament on the schedule.
It certainly seems like there’s room somewhere on the schedule for such an event. Why not bring the format to the high-stakes Tour Championship? Let’s do away with the staggered scoring format and bring on some head-to-head competition.
To make it work, the Tour would need to allow two more golfers into the field. We’d need 32 to make a nice, clean bracket. Doesn’t seem like having the top 32 advance from the BMW instead of the current top 30 is that big of a deal.
Also, 32 golfers make for a four-day event. The Dell had 64 golfers and needed five days of competition. It also had the pod system for the first three days but we don’t need that here. This Tour Championship Match Play (or whatever it would be called) would be an old-school “lose and go home” format.
Curious what the 2023 matchups would be? Based on the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings, here ya go:
- Scottie Scheffler (1) vs. Chris Kirk (32)
- Viktor Hovland (2) vs. Sahith Theegala (31)
- Rory McIlroy (3) vs. Sepp Straka (30)
- Jon Rahm (4) vs. Jordan Spieth (29)
- Lucas Glover (5) vs. Tyrrell Hatton (28)
- Max Homa (6) vs. Emiliano Grillo (27)
- Patrick Cantlay (7) vs. Sam Burns (26)
- Brian Harman (8) vs. Jason Day (25)
- Wyndham Clark (9) vs. Collin Morikawa (24)
- Matt Fitzpatrick (10) vs. Adam Schenk (23)
- Tommy Fleetwood (11) vs. Nick Taylor (22)
- Russell Henley (12) vs. Taylor Moore (21)
- Keegan Bradley (13) vs. Si Woo Kim (20)
- Rickie Fowler (14) vs. Corey Conners (19)
- Xander Schauffele (15) vs. Tony Finau (18)
- Tom Kim (16) vs. Sungae Im (17)
Just for fun, we created a mock printable bracket here.
First place at the Tour Championship would still be worth $18 million. The total purse would still be $75 million. Yes, half the field would only be in Atlanta for a single day of competition, but with this being the season ender, they’d merely get an early start to their offseasons.
One sticking point could be how the TV networks feels about it. (CBS and NBC alternate years as broadcast partner for all three playoff events.) They probably don’t want to risk not having the Scotties and Rorys and Rahms of the world around on the weekend, and nothing can be done to assure only big names advance.
After all, this is match play, where weird things happen. But it could make for some amazing viewing for golf fans to wrap up the season.