Mark Roe can't wait for the Tour Championship, but says the points system must be reviewed.
Loaded points system doesn't encourage best field
The Tour Championship is obviously one of the most exciting and important weeks on the PGA Tour.
This week's finale to the FedEx Cup will see 30 players competing to win a monumental prize of $10million on the wonderful East Lake course. For the PGA Tour players, this prize is second only to the majors and the WGC events.
And while I am enormously excited about the four days of tremendous golf I'll be covering for
Sky Sports, I can't help but feel disappointed by the anomalies of the points allocation in the FedEx Cup play-offs.
The winners of the three play-off events - The Barclays, The Deutsche Bank Championship and The BMW Championship - earned 2,500 FedEx Cup points, which is five times more than you would receive for winning a regular PGA Tour event.
You only earn 550 points for winning a WGC event and just 600 for a major championship. So that means somebody like Charley Hoffman, who had picked up just two top-10 finishes all season, is now in a prime position to win the $10million Tour Championship, simply because he won the Deutsche Bank.
I don't want to take anything away from what was a fine win for Hoffman, but should he really be in the top five in the points list going into the Tour Championship?
As the PGA Tour is keen to point out, anybody in the top five has their destiny in their own hands this week, so a victory for Kuchar would guarantee him the $10million.
Loaded
In my view, the points are far too heavily loaded in favour of these end-of-season tournaments. You can have a very average year and then do well in the play-offs and catapult yourself ahead of the more consistent performers.
Look at Martin Laird. He has had relatively little impact this year after winning at the end of 2009, but finished second in The Barclays, picked up 2,000 points, and is ahead of the Masters champions Phil Mickelson in the points list. That doesn't seem like a fair system of recognition.
Meanwhile, somebody like Rory McIlroy - who produced that wonderful victory at Quail Hollow earlier in the season and finished third at the PGA Championship - doesn't even make the top 30 and won't be playing at East Lake this week. That doesn't make sense either.
Surely the play-off points should be the same as they are for a regular Tour event - and certainly not four times higher than they are for a major? Surely fourth place in a play-off event shouldn't be worth more than winning a regular tour event?
The Tour Championship should feature the best possible field and you should have to play well for the whole season to get into it. In my view, the Tour Championship should be the players that have earned the most money on tour. Europe's Race to Dubai is the epitomy of what a Tour Championship should be... or perhaps I'm just old-fashioned?
Disappointed
Ultimately I'm disappointed that we won't see McIlroy there this week - and I could say the same about Ian Poulter, who couldn't quite sneak his way in at the BMW Championship.
We still have a strong British presence. Paul Casey is fifth in the points list, having run Dustin Johnson close at the BMW Championship, and Justin Rose and Luke Donald are also there.
And while the absentees will be disappointed, I'm sure Colin Montgomerie will be delighted that McIlroy, Poulter and Padraig Harrington will not be playing in America ahead of next week's Ryder Cup.
Nine of the US team are in the field at East Lake - compared to just one European team-member - and will fly over early next week. They will have less time to acclimatise to the time change and will have less time to rest. That could give the European team an extra edge.
So while I'm not convinced by the system, at least there is a plus side for Europe's Ryder Cup hopes.
I don't want to sound too negative here. The Tour Championship will see 30 wonderful players chasing a huge, huge prize and the play-offs have been very exciting events to watch. They are full of plots and sub plots.
No matter how the points system works, you can't help but be excited about an event like this. I look forward to East Lake with interest.
