TOUR Insider: Els starts Playoffs at No. 1, but will he finish there?
By Mike McAllister, PGATOUR.COM Managing Editor
PARAMUS, N.J. -- Ernie Els was great earlier this season. Then he was fortunate. And now? He's the guy everybody else in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup wants to be a month from now.
As the No. 1 player in FedExCup points heading in The Barclays, Els is in a unique position. While the 122 other pros participating in the Playoffs need to move up in the standings in order to win the FedExCup, the South African merely has to maintain his spot. If he's still No. 1 at the end of the Playoffs, then he gets the trophy, the $10 million bonus check ... and most likely, the Player of the Year award.
But while you may think Els is wearing a target on his back, he certainly doesn't. He's looked at the numbers, the five-fold increase in available points during the Playoffs events. He understands the spread of wealth that helped him maintain his points lead for the last 22 weeks during the regular season may now come back to haunt him during the next four events. Winners move up quickly, and if we've learned anything this year -- especially in the big events -- it's that the winners are not the usual suspects. They can come from anywhere.
Thus, there's no sense in worrying about the bull's-eye right now.
"Do I feel like the guy being hunted? I don't feel like it yet," Els said Wednesday. "I think there's so many points available and there's so many guys that can make moves. I think by THE TOUR Championship, you can feel like maybe guys are coming after you.
"More than anything, I think we're hunting points."
Els was the most successful hunter earlier this season. His back-to-back wins on the Florida Swing -- the World Golf Championships-CA Championship, followed by the Arnold Palmer Inviational presented by MasterCard -- resulted in 1,050 FedExCup points, almost 58 percent of his current total of 1,846 points.
When he won at Bay Hill on March 28, he moved to No. 1 on the FedExCup list. He's managed to stay there despite just two top-10 finishes in his last nine TOUR starts.
As Els sees it, the reason he's still No. 1 is simple -- players kept winning tournaments who were not FedExCup-eligible. Graeme McDowell at the U.S. Open. Louis Oosthuizen at the British Open. Martin Kaymer at the PGA Championship. Lee Westwood at the St. Jude Classic presented by Smith & Nephew. Arjun Atwal at last week's Wyndham Championship.
The FedExCup points available to the winners of those five events are worth a collective 2,800 points (600 for each major win, 500 for regular TOUR events). But since none of those five players were PGA TOUR members at the time of their wins, those points went unused.
Oh, and it also helped that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson combined for just one win this year (Mickelson at the Masters).
"I had the right people win different tournaments for me to stay on top," Els noted. "... Certain people won, and certain people didn't win."
But now?
"It's a different ball game. It's basically a race now. The race is on. The race starts now."
Indeed. With a win in any Playoffs event worth 2,500 points, Els' lead could quickly be wiped out when the dust settles Sunday night at The Barclays. A year ago, Heath Slocum was next-to-last in points going into The Barclays. But when he won at Liberty National, he moved up to third.
Theoretically, any player in the field could replace Els at No. 1 not only with a win, but just a second-place finish (worth 1,500 points).
"Do I feel like the guy being hunted? I don't feel like it yet."
-- Ernie Els
On the flip side, if Els doesn't make the cut, he could conceivably fall to 16th in the standings, although it would be more likely that he'd only drop a handful of spots.
"You need to be on your game in these next four weeks," Els said. "The point system is so crazy that if you don't play well, you're going to get left behind."
When Els returned to the United States after missing the cut in all three starts -- including the British Open -- during the European portion of his summer schedule, he felt the urgency to get his game back in order. A couple of decent results at Firestone (tie for 22nd) and Whistling Straits (tie for 18th) has him feeling better.
But now he comes to The Barclays, and the form chart is mixed. He's won this tournament twice, both times in the late '90s. He tied for second last year and tied for fourth in 2007. Those are good signs. But the only other time The Barclays was held at Ridgewood, in 2008, he missed the cut. Not so good.
As he casually noted, "I'd like to do something better than that" this week. Good sign -- shooting a 67 in Wednesday's pro-am.
When Tiger Woods won his two FedExCup titles, he was ranked No. 1 going into the Playoffs both times. But when Vijay Singh won in 2008, he was seventh in points starting out before winning the first two Playoffs events that year.
Els will tee off Thursday as the only player who can match Tiger's achievements this time around. But he's also aware that everyone else is hoping for a Vijay-type run.
And when you're No. 1, there's only one direction you can go.
"I can go backwards very quickly," Els said, "if I don't play good golf."
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