Many could benefit from Woods' absence at The Barclays  PGA TOUR Staff At the conclusion of the Wyndham Championship on Sunday, the FedExCup points will be reset, with Tiger Woods starting with 100,000 points, Vijay Singh with 99,000, Jim Furyk with 98,500 and so forth down the list of 144 players who qualify for the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup.  A win at The Barclays could move Vijay Singh well ahead of Tiger Woods in the FedExCup standings. (WireImage)
In addition to the points reset, Playoff events will be worth 50,000 points, rather than the 25,000 available at a regular PGA TOUR event. This means a Playoff event winner will receive 9,000 points (10,300 at THE TOUR Championship), rather than 4,500 as in most weeks during the regular season. A handful of players, including Tiger Woods, have chosen not to play the first Playoff event -- The Barclays -- for a variety of reasons. Woods, who is coming off wins in the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational and PGA Championship, said on his website "Playing the last two weeks in the heat and humidity were mentally and physically draining.... I need a short break." The fact that the No. 1 seed will not be in the first event gives others a golden opportunity to gain points while he is on the sidelines: • Anyone above 60th place can pass Woods with a victory. • Anyone above 21st place can pass Woods with a second-place finish. • Anyone above ninth place can pass Woods with a third-place finish. • Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk or Phil Mickelson could pass Woods with a fourth place finish. • Singh or Furyk could pass Woods with eighth or better. • Singh could pass Woods with a 13th or better. Clearly, Woods would drop to seventh if all of the above happened. He would also drop to seventh if someone outside the top six won The Barclays, and seeds 2-6 all tied for second. A tie for seventh is as far as he could drop after the first event, though. Of course, it is also possible for him to remain in first place after The Barclays, if none of the above-listed bullet points come to fruition. The likely scenario is that two or three players will pass Woods, and he will be in third or fourth going into the Deutsche Bank Championship. He could be as many as 8,000 points out of first -- if Singh were to win The Barclays. Singh's most recent finishes at Westchester Country Club first, tied for seventh and joint fourth. Any of those finishes would move him ahead of Woods, by at least 500 points. A reasonable expectation, based on our modeling of the Playoffs, is that Woods will be 5,000-6,000 points behind the new first-place player, between 1,000-2,000 behind the second-place player and a few (about 500) points ahead or behind the next player. Jim Furyk has also played well at The Barclays, with second, a tie for 22nd and a tie for ninth, his most recent finishes. Of course, second would pass Woods, but the tie for ninth would leave him about 100 points short. Phil Mickelson has had four top-25 finishes in his most recent four Barclays, although his best, a share of 13th, would not catch Woods. Of course, Woods is not out of the hunt for the FedExCup, even without a start at The Barclays. In the four years of the Deutsche Bank Championship, he has finished first, tied for 40th, tied for second and joint seventh. Consider the following scenario: • Zach Johnson wins The Barclays • Vijay Singh finishes second at The Barclays In this scenario, Woods would be 6,000 points behind Johnson and 4,400 behind Vijay Singh. Another win at the Deutsche Bank Championship for Woods would put him back in the lead unless Johnson finished second or third, or Singh finished second. However, he has put a lot of pressure on himself to perform extremely well at both the Deutsche Bank Championship and the BMW Championship. A tie for second at the Deutsche Bank Championship would leave him at least 1,600 points behind Johnson in our hypothetical scenario, and no better than tied with Singh. In fact, he'd probably still be behind both of them and possibly another player, depending on who won the event. A tie for seventh would be worth about 1,600 points, leaving him at least 4,400 points behind Johnson and 2,800 behind Singh. If Singh or Johnson have a top-five finish in Boston, Woods would be 5,000-8,000 behind one and about 3,500 or more behind the other. There would probably also be at least one other player ahead of Woods and two or three others within 3,000 points of him. Given this scenario going into the BMW Championship, Tiger would desperately need a victory to have a good chance to win the FedExCup. If he doesn't win at the BMW (assuming the above scenario), he would go into THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola trailing four or five players, and significantly behind at least one of them, even with a second-place finish at the BMW Championship. In summary, Woods' strategy of skipping The Barclays is dangerous. Even with a top-10 finish at the Deutsche Bank Championship and a top-five at the BMW Championship, he could easily find himself in fourth or fifth going into THE TOUR Championship, with several other people having a chance to beat him. The pressure is to win at either the Deutsche Bank Championship or the BMW Championship, and have a good finish in the other. |
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