The PGA Tour refers to this portion of the season as the FedEx Cup Fall. It might as well be known as the road easier traveled to Augusta National.
The fields are weak. The reward is not.
Patton Kizzire was No. 257 in the world ranking and fighting to keep his PGA Tour card when he put together four good rounds at the Procore Championship and faced very little stress in a five-shot victory over David Lipsky, who checked in at No. 277 in the world.
That gets him into the Masters for the first time since 2019.
At the next fall stop, Kevin Yu — No. 135 in the world — hit the shot of his life to 6 feet for birdie to win a playoff at the Sanderson Farms Championship over Beau Hossler, who played his 200th event on the PGA Tour without winning.
Yu can look forward to that cream-colored envelope from Augusta National in December.
They will be joined by Matt McCarty, who has experienced a life-changing three months.
McCarty won for the first time in his third year on the Korn Ferry Tour in July, and then he won twice more to earn an instant promotion to the PGA Tour. In his second start, he won the new Black Desert Championship in Utah with wonderful lag putting to ease stress and a 3-wood on a reachable par 4 to 3 1/2 feet for eagle that effectively clinched it.
Not since Jason Gore in 2005 has a player won three times in the minor leagues and then picked off a PGA Tour title in the same season. The future looks bright for the 26-year-old lefty from Arizona. He was at No. 257 in the world three months ago. Now he's at No. 47.
But there is no denying the field strength at Black Desert. It was the weakest of the year on the PGA Tour except for the opposite-field events.
This is not a new development.
Augusta National restored invitations to PGA Tour winners after the 2007 Masters, but the biggest favor came when the tour went to a wraparound schedule — six fall tournaments after the Tour Championship — and the club awarded Masters invitation to those winners.
There have been 87 fall events — excluding the U.S. Open and Masters in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic — dating to 2013. Twenty-five winners, or roughly 29%, have been outside the top 100 in the world ranking. Ten of them were outside the top 250.
The only contender at the Masters the following year was Smylie Kaufman. He shot 61 on the final day in Las Vegas to win at No. 226 in the world. And then at the 2016 Masters, he was in the final group with Jordan Spieth and shot 81 (it didn't end well for Spieth, either ).
Is it time for Augusta National to rethink invitations to winners in the fall?
Winning is hard on the PGA Tour in any month, and playing the Masters is a carrot as juicy as the two-year exemption.
And it's not like the Masters should be concerned with the size of its field, which it prefers to be under 100. The average field size since Augusta National began inviting fall winners on the PGA Tour is 90.6, with a high of 97 in 2014 and 2015.
But times (and money) have changed in recent years as the PGA Tour tries to get its best players together more often, especially late in the year. Those who finish in the top 50 in the FedEx Cup are assured of being in all the $20 million signature events.
The fall has no bearing on the top 50, so there is little incentive to play. Only nine players from the top 50 have played in the FedEx Cup Fall, four of them in Napa, California, ahead of the Presidents Cup. Five more are playing this week in Las Vegas.
The fall used to include some of the biggest purses, whether it was a World Golf Championship in Shanghai or limited fields in Japan and South Korea and Malaysia.
Meanwhile, the likes of Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Robert MacIntyre and LIV Golf's Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton are populating European tour fields at stops like Royal County Down, Wentworth and The Belfry. So is Billy Horschel, who won the BMW PGA Championship.
Perhaps it's time for the Masters to consider some of Europe's top events, whether it's the Dunhill Links in October or some of the United Arab Emirates stops in January and November.
One possibility is to base a winner's invitation on the field strength, though that presents another set of problems. A late withdrawal — or entry based on big appearance money — could be enough to move the field strength number.
One of the old World Golf Championships once used such a formula. Tiger Woods decided to play the New Zealand Open as a favor to his Kiwi caddie, Steve Williams. His presence as the No. 1 player elevated the field. Craig Parry won the tournament, got into the NEC Invitational and won at Sahalee in 2002.
There's no reason to expand the FedEx Cup category from top 30 (Tour Championship) to top 50. The latter already get enough perks, and a high finish in the first postseason event could be enough to do the trick. Winning in the fall is harder than that.
The Masters has 71 players already eligible with five more falls events, and roughly a dozen more who could make it through being in the top 50 in the world ranking at the end of the year. The new year has 14 tournaments before the Masters.
Only when the field approaches — or passes — 100 players will the Masters probably contemplate a change. But there's enough change in golf around the world that it's not a bad idea to start considering options.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Doug Ferguson, The Associated Press
