Did you see that play Sunday?
No, I'm not talking about Kevin Walter's crazy catch that pinballed through three players before arriving in his hands. It was much more impressive than that.
Nor am I talking about Jacoby Ellsbury's 14th inning homerun against the Yankees, which kept the Red Sox alive in the Wild Card race. It was much more valuable than that — 11 million dollars more valuable.
This isn't a trick question. It happened in a major American pro sport, and it wasn't any kind of a gimmick. If you haven't gotten it by now, you probably aren't going to.
Let's recap. Late Sunday afternoon, Bill Haas found himself in a two−man playoff with Hunter Mahan for the PGA Tour Championship. The winner would also win the FedEx cup, golf's season−long aggregate prize.
On the second playoff hole — the par−4 17th — Mahan put his second shot safely on the green. But Haas pulled his shot left and found water. He caught a break, as the ball was only about half submerged and the bottom buried in the mud. Haas put a foot in the water, lined up like he was hitting a bunker shot, and as mud and water sprayed up into the sky, put his pitch within a foot of the hole.
He'd make his par, and on the third playoff hole take home the tournament and the prize money.
So you missed that one? Don't feel bad, so did I, and I generally follow the PGA. No one could really blame us: The NFL provided America with another exciting slate of games, while in baseball, both the American League and National League are in the middle of intense races for their final playoff spots.
The PGA is undoubtedly suffering in the post−Tiger era. Last year's Tour Championship had a 61 percent drop in ratings from 2009, and it is unlikely that 2011 fared any better. So how can the PGA improve upon their FedEx Cup system? Well, they could guarantee that we got a playoff like this every year.
No, I'm not pulling a Tim Donaghy. The PGA needs to be fixing their system, not fixing results. Four days of stroke play and a point system that PGA officials can barely understand are not drawing anyone's attention. But a match play tournament, now that is something that our upset−loving, winners−and−losers−obsessed sports society could get behind.
Right now, 125 golfers qualify for the FedEx Cup. If you up that to 128, you have seven perfectly even rounds of 1v1 match play golf. Spread it over a couple of weekends at a couple of different courses to avoid seeing too much of one course. The final would be 36 holes, while the rest of the tournament would be 18 holes per match.
But that isn't the entire problem. The PGA performed ratings suicide with their choice of weekend. The FedEx Cup finals need to be pushed back to after baseball season. Golf had a perfect opportunity with the NBA unable to get its act together. Sure it's cold in some parts of the United States, but the average temperature in November for Atlanta, home of the Tour Championship, is still in the high 50s.
The final also shouldn't be played on a Sunday during football season. Either play it on Saturday, or wait for Monday. CBS has had successful ratings for Monday U.S. Open finals, so there is a definite precedent for doing so.
Maybe there is no solution to the problem of golf's declining popularity. Maybe it is nothing more than a relic of a prior generation hanging around long past its prime (think Brett Favre). But if it does hope to live on, it needs to appeal to our excitement−craving generation. And a FedEx playoff could do just that.
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Ethan Sturm is a junior majoring in biopsychology. He can be reached at ethan.sturm@tufts.edu.
