The PGA Championship Should Still Be in August

The FedEx Cup playoffs started today and it’s hard to overstate how little I care.

The PGA Tour has been trying to make fetch happen with the FedEx Cup playoffs for 15 years. It hasn’t worked. It didn’t work when it was in September. It won’t work when it’s in August.

Similar to how NASCAR’s playoffs have failed to boost its struggling fall schedule, the PGA’s efforts to gain an audience during football season simply have not succeeded. It’s similar because people watch a golf tournament or a NASCAR race to see who will win that race. They don’t care about points or playoffs; they watch to see who will win that day.

In both sports, the biggest events are not the playoff events. In NASCAR, people care about the Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600, and the Southern 500, along with certain tracks like Bristol or a road course that appeals to fans. In golf, it’s the four Majors that fans care about, along with certain courses such as Pebble Beach or Sawgrass or River Highlands.

No NASCAR fan would ever say the final race of the season is their favorite, just like no golf fan would say the Tour Championship is their favorite tournament.

While both playoff systems are failing, NASCAR smartly didn’t sacrifice the rest of its established schedule to make it work.