Fancy a spot of number crunching? It might not take Einstein to work out that whoever wins the FedEx Cup series after this week’s Tour Championship will bag a hefty bonus of €6.8million on top of whatever they pick-up in prize money from the €5.1million season-ending event in East Lake, Atlanta.
However, the permutations for the select 30-man field are less straightforward, but suffice to say that Pádraig Harrington can still mathematically scoop the wallet-busting top prize.
The Dubliner is currently sixth in the standings with 1,400 points after the points reset was made at the conclusion of the BMW Championship. Tiger Woods moved back to the top of the standings with his imperious win at the BMW – the penultimate event in the four tournament play-off series - and tops the pile with 2,500 points.
Steve Stricker is second (2,250), Jim Furyk third (2,000), Zach Johnson fourth (1,800) and Heath Slocum fifth (1,600). As the promotional strap-line says “destiny for the top five is in their own hands” because if they win the Tour Championship come Sunday and secure the 2,500 points on offer for first then they win the FedEx Cup – regardless of how any of the other top four finish.
Harrington’s case is more precarious and realistically he needs to win and secure 3,900 points (the maximum he can obtain). If he does that the only man who can stop him is Woods by finishing second for a total of 4,000 (2,500+1,500).
Say Harrington finished second (1,400+1,500=2,900) that means Woods would only have to finish eighth to overhaul him (2,500+425=2,925) and that’s not taking into account what the four other players ahead of him do.
Clear as mud, eh.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)