Connect fans to playoffs

Keegan Bradley, the PGA Champion, is trying to make the Presidents Cup team. He's trying to win player of the year honors. He's trying to have the best rookie season in forever. He shot a 64 at EastLake on Thursday, in the first round of the Tour Championship, the last of the four FedEx Cup events. He's got something — big somethings — riding on every shot. You get $1.44 million for winning the event. You get $10 million for winning the FedEx Cup. (Cleveland SL 290 Driver
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So he cares. Of course he cares. The question is, do you?
Do you think it's weird that that a Big Golf Event is being played right now and that three of the year's major winners — Charl Schwartzel (Masters), Rory McIlory (U.S. Open) and Darren Clarke (British Open) — are not even in the field? I do. Yeah, I know: it's the Tour Championship.
The Tour's contract with FedEx for the playoff series expires next year, in its sixth year. Tour officials are discussing an extension now. But there is no discussion between FedEx and the Tour of a radical rethinking of how the playoffs are played (Cleveland SL 290 Driver
). That tells you that various executives, both in Ponte Vedra and Memphis, are happy with the TV ratings the four playoff tournaments are producing. Nothing in modern life spells success like your eyeball-to-screen ratio. What's lacking is anything resembling a passionate interest in the four events as a series, a playoff, an unfolding drama. People are smart. They can see it for what it is: TV programming, but not sport.
Think of the four events as one 18-round tournament. Start with a full field of the best players in the world. Make cuts after every single round. At the end of every day, for the first 12 rounds, the worst six scores, on a cumulative basis, are out of the playoffs.
Everything is cumulative. The second week in Boston is not a fresh start; it picks up where the first week, in New York, ended. The third week, in Chicago, picks up where Boston left off. (Cleveland SL 290 Driver
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In the fourth week, in Atlanta, you have about 70 players in the field, slotted on the basis of what they've done over the first 12 rounds. The Survivors. More cuts on Thursday. More on Friday. By Saturday morning, only 32 players are left. Thirty-two players who have earned the right to be there by what they did over the course of the season (which got them into the first event) and by what they did over 14 rounds. And then comes the one and only reset: The 32