Rory McIlroy will not be playing the FedEx St. Jude Championship this week, and Jordan Spieth has offered his opinion on the Northern Irishman’s decision to skip the event in Memphis.
McIlroy has enjoyed a stellar year, with three wins to his name including The Players Championship and The Masters, while Spieth has struggled with his game all season long on the PGA Tour.
Both players qualified for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, but McIlroy decided to skip the FedEx St. Jude Championship due to the fact that not playing would have zero impact on his chances of winning the Tour Championship at East Lake.
The PGA Tour are expected to be unhappy with that decision from McIlroy, but it’s their own fault really.
The powers that be at the PGA Tour need to devise a better system whereby the best players in the world are compelled to play all of the Playoff events.
If anything, the fact that the Masters champion will not be at TPC Southwind only lends further credence to the notion that LIV Golf have got their model absolutely spot on.
Jordan Spieth reacts to Rory McIlroy’s FedEx St. Jude Championship decision
McIlroy knows he will be inside the top 30 of the FedEx Cup points list by the time the PGA Tour heads to Atlanta, Georgia, for the Tour Championship.
PGA Tour golfers are independent contractors, unlike the players on LIV, so they are well within their rights to pick and choose which tournaments they actually play.
Spieth spoke about McIlroy’s decision to skip the FedEx St Jude Classic on Tuesday, and delivered his honest verdict on the situation.
He said: “You might have one or two guys do that for an event but I don’t think it will become a thing because they are still huge events against the best players in the world. “I think they’re trying to figure out how to make sure you don’t skip both of them and ideally neither of them.”
The PGA Tour absolutely have to look at ways of making the Playoffs better. The point in having a three-tournament finale to the season is so that the best players gather to compete against each other, and that just isn’t happening right now.
In fact, getting the FedEx Cup Playoff system right should be one of the main priorities for new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp before the start of the 2026 season.
How can the PGA Tour address FedEx Cup Playoff problem?
One idea is fairly obvious, make playing in every Playoff event obligatory for every golfer who is qualified.
This may be tricky because while the players are members of the PGA Tour, they are not employed by them as such.
The best way is to somehow give an advantage to the player who is leading the FedEx Cup points list heading into the Tour Championship at East Lake.
While a handicap head start is perhaps not the way to go, a points lead could work. So if, for example, Scottie Scheffler is leading the race with one event remaining, he would start the Tour Championship with a 500 point lead, meaning that a top-five finish would secure him the FedEx Cup.
And then the Tour Championship itself could be a separate entity, just like it used to be. You could have a winner of the golf tournament and a different winner of the overall standings, like when Tiger Woods won at East Lake but Justin Rose scooped the FedEx Cup.
The bottom line is that something has to change because right now, it’s just not working.
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