Jim McCabe

Nicholas Thompson studied business management at Georgia Tech and he deals with numbers all the time while playing golf on the PGA Tour. So, he felt he had a pretty good grasp of things when he studied the FedEx Cup plan for 2008.

Then, he stood over a putt of some 25-30 feet on the 36th hole of The Barclays, the first tournament in the playoff series.

He made it to make the cut on the number. That was the good part.

He then put up sterling rounds of 68-67 to finish tied for seventh. That was the even better part.

He moved from 47th to 20th in the FedEx Cup standings. That was the best part of all.

But ... had he missed that putt at the 36th hole back on Friday and missed the cut by one, Thompson would have landed in 83d place in the FedEx Cup standings. That was the perplexing part.

“I mean, I move up 27 spots or down 36 spots on one putt? That seems like kind of a lot,” said Thompson.

Don’t get him wrong. The system worked on his behalf that first week and at the tender age of 25 he’s thrilled to be involved in tournaments offering millions of dollars in prize and bonus money. But he falls in line with many of his colleagues who feel that the tweaking officials did regarding the points distribution within the FedEx Cup “went from one extreme to the other.”

When the season-long points list was introduced in 2007, it was met with some skepticism, a little bit of excitement, but a whole lot of “let’s wait and see.” And when it was all played out and clearly the most dominant player in the game, Tiger Woods, won the FedEx Cup, it was easy to suggest that the system must work when the best wins it.

Ah, but there were glitches. Woods didn’t play the first of the four playoff events and what sort of playoff allows for a team to skip a postseason game and still advance? Even more confounding was the lack of movement. Only two players at the first playoff tournament worked their way into the top 120 to play at the second tournament. Then only two players moved from outside the top 70 to inside and get in the BMW Championship. A mere three players started the BMW Championship outside the top 30 and get inside of it to make the Tour Championship.

“Not enough movement,” players shouted.

To their credit, officials listened. They came back with a points distribution system that would afford more movement, the biggest adjustment being the 2,000 points a player gets for making the cut. PGA Tour players being typical PGA Tour players said OK to it without studying it, then after months go by and all of a sudden the plan is put in place ... you can guess what they shouted.

“Too much movement.”

Now, we can poke fun at players for being upset with a system that they themselves voted for, but the point is, they might be right. The 2007 FedEx Cup plan didn’t create enough chances for players to move; the 2008 plan perhaps has too much volatility.

For example:

Paul Casey finishes tied for fifth at The Barclays and earns 3,455 FedEx Cup points, then he misses the cut at the Deutsche Bank Championship and receives zero. Meanwhile a player who finishes 70th in The Barclays earns 2,098 points and if he were to finish 70th again at the Deutsche Bank Championship he’d get 2,098 more for a two-week stash of 4,196, comfortably more than what Casey got for finishing tied for fifth and missing the cut.

Sorry, but that’s wrong. There isn’t a PGA Tour member out there who would take two 70th-place finishes ahead of a T-5 and a missed cut, so why such a disparity in FedEx Cup points?

Because officials did what was asked of them — they tweaked to produce some movement. Only thing is, they overtweaked it.

But all is not lost.

“NASCAR took five years to get [its season-long points race] right,” said Thompson. “Hopefully we can get it right in three.”

Giving 9,000 FedEx Cup points to the winner, 5,400 to the runner-up, 3,400 to third, all the way down to 100 for the guy in 70th place is probably proportionately fine; it’s the 2,000 points you get just for making the cut that has to be adjusted, and most likely will be.

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