Rory McIlroy suggests his idea to transform the PGA Tour playoffs and make them more interesting

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Rory McIlroy returns to action this week at the BMW Championship after the Northern Irishman proved to be the only player who sat out the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind.

There will be plenty of intrigue surrounding Rory McIlroy‘s performance as he looks to win the FedEx Cup for a fourth time this year. There is also the small matter of the Ryder Cup on the horizon in September.

Many will be expecting McIlroy to look particularly fresh after he caused a bit of a stir by deciding to not play the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis last week. The 36-year-old was the only player in the top 70 of the FedEx Cup who was not involved.

Some felt McIlroy made the right decision to give himself the best chance of winning the Tour Championship. He was certainly vindicated by the fact that he did not drop a single place in the standings.

Rory McIlroy discusses the idea of making playing each FedEx Cup playoff event mandatory

And with the Tour Championship getting rid of starting strokes for this year, McIlroy only needed to make sure that he was in the top 30 after this week anyway.

It has led to a debate over whether it should be mandatory for players to play at each event to earn their ticket to the following week.

And interestingly, it seems that McIlroy himself would be in favour of a change which saw only the top 50 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship progress to the next playoff event.

“There’s obviously been a lot of discourse about should these playoffs be mandatory or not. Obviously I didn’t play last week, and is that something that they need to look at? It could be something where — and I’ve heard this idea kicked around, where everything resets after Wyndham and then the top 70 just play for the top 50 spots to get into the next week and then everything resets again here, and then the top 30 from this week then make it to the Tour Championship,” he said.

“I mean, if you want to try to make it straight playoffs and elimination, I think that would be a good way to go.

“You’re trying to balance a lot of different things. You’re trying to balance the competitive integrity of what the playoffs are, but you’re also trying to keep the media rights partners happy, you’re trying to keep the sponsors happy. They’re the people that are paying the big bucks to expect the big names to be playing in their golf tournaments, and that’s a delicate balance.”

Rory McIlroy issues his verdict on the Tour Championship getting rid of starting strokes

While the starting strokes were definitely not popular, they did make the first two playoff events a little more important. The better you performed at those, the better your initial score would be at East Lake.

Hopefully, removing the starting strokes leads to a more exciting Tour Championship. McIlroy suggested that he was also in favour of that change for this year.

“I think from a player perspective, it seems like the consensus was that people didn’t like the starting strokes. So to get rid of that is a good thing,” he added.

“But I now think that the Tour Championship not being starting strokes, it’s sort of its own — it’s its own thing now. Obviously you win the Tour Championship, which then means you win the FedExCup, but I don’t necessarily think that means that you’re the season-long winner — unless Scottie Scheffler wins it and he is the season-long winner. Everyone knows Scottie Scheffler is, he’s won two majors this year. He’s head and shoulders above the rest in terms of the points going into this week. He’ll be ahead of everyone in the points going into next week. So he’s deservedly got his bonus all the way through.

“Then everything resets, and I guess I see it as more of a one-off event than a culmination of the entire season.”

The good news is that the first event in Memphis did deliver a fantastic finish, with Justin Rose edging out J.J. Spaun in a playoff.

It will be very intriguing to see how the likes of McIlroy and Scheffler play this week, given that they will likely have one eye on East Lake and lifting the Tour Championship crown.