Anthony Kim went straight from college to the PGA Tour via Q-school in 2006

The NY Times is reporting that the PGA Tour is considering a dramatic change to the end of the season that would significantly reshape how players earn PGA Tour cards.  The net of the idea is that the players who don’t make the FedEx Cup Playoffs would play in a series of 3 tournaments against Nationwide Tour players.  The series would have a points structure and the rankings at the end of the series would determine who gets a PGA Tour card for the following season.

The current speculation is that the tournaments would consist of 75 PGA Tour players and 50 Nationwide Tour players competing for 50 PGA Tour cards.   The Tour’s policy board has given preliminary approval to the concept and began informing players of the decision by memo yesterday.

With the proposed change, Q-school wouldn’t go away, but it would only provide access to the Nationwide Tour.  This would effectively eliminate the possibility of a player going straight from college or the mini-tours to the PGA Tour.  Tour officials think that this will improve the quality of tournament fields on Tour (I didn’t know they needed strengthening).

That may or may not be true, but it means that we wouldn’t have success stories from players like Anthony Kim or Rickie Fowler, who went straight from college to the PGA Tour to the Ryder Cup last year.  Yes, Fowler is the exception to the rule, but he was a much needed exception last year given Tiger’s lackluster play.

There are still plenty of details to work out and quite a bit could change between now and then.  I’m assuming this would take the place of the fall series (at least part of it), but that’s not completely clear right now.  According to PGA Tour spokesman Ty Votaw:

The number from the Nationwide that goes to the three-tournament series hasn’t been determined yet.  And the question of how many cards has not been, either.

This change would certainly add drama to the end of the PGA Tour season (although I think it already has plenty).  And it would also have the benefit of focusing additional attention on FedEx Cup (bleh!) standings throughout the season, which I’m sure Tim Finchem would love.  But honestly I don’t like the idea of taking away the chance, however unlikely, that an unknown pro can show up at Q-school, play his heart out, and find himself teeing it up against Tiger and Phil a few weeks later.

All of this begs the question: Why?  $$$:  Nationwide is not renewing it’s sponsorship of the Nationwide Tour after 2012.  The PGA Tour is shopping for a new sponsor and by funneling players through the Nationwide Tour (or whatever it will be called in 2013), they presumably increase the value of the sponsorship.  It’s all about the Benjamins.

Given that players were just informed about the proposed changes yesterday afternoon, keep your eyes peeled for reactions this week at Bay Hill.

[Image Flicker/Chase McAlpine]

The Golf Channel put together a video this morning recapping the top 5 golf shots of the year.  I can’t say that I disagree with any of their selections.  It’s interesting to note that 2 of the top 5 came within the last 3 weeks.  The Fall Finish is proving to be a hell of a lot more exciting and compelling than the FedEx Cup.  When will the tour learn that you can’t just manufacture drama by dangling huge sums of cash in front of a bunch of multi-millionaires?

In case you haven’t clicked on the link above, here’s a quick breakdown of the list.  #5 was Rory McIlroy’s 2nd shot into the 15th hole at Quail Hollow.  It was a great shot from a great round of golf.  #4 was Matt Kuchar’s brilliant shot into #18 during the playoff at the Barclays.  Rocco grabbed the #3 spot with his hole out on 17 during the final round at the Frys.com.  And of course we couldn’t forget Mickelson’s 6 iron from the trees at the Masters which came in at #2.

Grabbing the top spot was Jonathan’s Byrd’s ace on the 4th playoff hole to win the Shriners Hospital Open.  You really can’t hit a more perfect shot, in a more clutch situation.  Therefore, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that not only was it the best shot of the year, it’s probably the greatest single golf shot in the history of the PGA tour.

The only way that shot could have been better was if it had won a major championship rather than the Shriners.  But until that happens, or until somebody double eagles a hole to win a golf tournament, Jonathan Byrd’s ace will be on top of my list of the greatest golf shots ever on the PGA tour.

Photo by Rob Hayashida Sandbox8.com

In an inspirational moment to over-sleepers everywhere, Jim Furyk has won the FedEx Cup and claimed both the $10m FedEx Cup prize and $1.3m for winning the Tour Championship.  Furyk added some dramatic tension over the last few holes, but the best bunker player in the world hit one of the most clutch bunker shots of his career to claim golf’s largest payday.

Maybe Furyk can afford a back-up alarm clock now?  Or he could even hire somebody to do this every morning.

In Ryder Cup news, Monty has got to be feeling good about Luke Donald’s current form.  Although he’s still probably feeling some indigestion over Paul Casey.  I mean seriously, you didn’t put the #7 player in the world on your team?  And hopefully Matt Kuchar will step his game back up for next week.  5 over par from the guy leading the FedEx Cup isn’t exactly the performance we need from him next week.

Just in case you needed more convincing that the FedEx Cup scoring system needs significant revision.

Gary Van Sickle has written a great article on why the current FedEx Cup scoring is stupid and how he would change it.   Currently, winning a major counts for 400 points while winning a FedEx cup event counts for 2500 points.  In other words, a player could complete the grandslam and still get 100 less points for those 4 wins combined than Charlie Hoffman got for winning the Deutsche Bank.  In what alternate universe does that make sense?

Van Sickle proposes that the playoffs be switched to cumulative stroke-play with a 5 stroke bonus going to an event winner.  He goes through some of the implications that this scoring system would have had on this year’s Tour Championship, but the big 2 are that Phil would be out due to his missed cut at The Barclays and Tiger would have made the top 30 comfortably due to his solid, if unspectacular performance over the first 3 playoff events.

The other benefit of this system is that it would be much, much easier for fans to follow.  With the current system, I (along with most everybody else it seems) can’t follow the point standings in real time due to the large swings in points as players move up and down the leaderboard.  If the scoring was based on par, fans could quickly and easily keep track of the standings during events.

I like the idea, but there’s no chance in hell that the Tour is smart enough to implement something like this that makes sense.  Instead they’ll just add a new rule during this off-season that somehow makes sure Tiger will never miss another Tour Championship – exemption if you’ve got 50+ wins on tour, or if you have more than 5 majors, etc.

ATLANTA—Hoping to win the PGA tour’s FedEx Cup, bewildered NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin critically injured 23 golfers and killed seven others while speeding across the East Lake golf course Thursday. “What—wait, hold on, which cup is this?” asked a visibly confused Hamlin, who after Thursday’s tragedy remains 35 points behind first-place Sprint Cup driver Mark Martin. “Looking back, it was a little weird that I was driving on grass, striking people at high speeds, and not racing any other cars. But I’m a competitor, and if there’s a cup, I’m going to try to win it.” PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem later awarded Hamlin 150 FedEx Cup points for his effort.

The Onion (via GeoffShackleford.com)

From SecretintheDirt.com (Steve Elkington)