Inside the FedExCup: Seeding becoming critical

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There are two weeks left in the Regular Season for players to improve their seeding prior to the start of the Playoffs. This week, all of the top 30 golfers in the FedExCup standings with the exception of Tiger Woods will be in the field. Next week, virtually all of the remaining players competing for a seed in the Playoffs will tee it up at the Wyndham Championship -- in fact, only 20 of the top 200 golfers in the FedExCup standings are not in the field either this week or next.

Singh

Why is seeding so important? The difference between, for example, ninth and 10th seed is only 125 points, whereas the player who finishes 70th at The Barclays will receive 2,155 points. So seeding may seem unimportant. Last year, the first year of the FedExCup, seeding was unimportant in determining the winner of the Cup.

Tiger ran away with the title, finishing second at the Deutsche Bank Championship, first at the BMW Championship and first at the THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola to win by more than 12,000 points. However, that kind of dominance in the Playoffs is unlikely to occur every year, even with Tiger in the mix.

In creating the FedExCup points structure, PGA TOUR Research simulated the Playoffs for each year from 2001, using results in events like the majors, THE PLAYERS Championship and the World Golf Championships as surrogates for Playoff events in those years.

Perry

In three of the simulated years' results, the difference between first and second place was less than 1,100 points, which is less than the difference between the first and fifth seeds or the difference between the 15th and 30th seeds. In one simulated year, the difference was 122 points -- less than the difference between ninth and 10th.

If Kenny Perry finishes in the top three at the PGA Championship this week, he takes over 1st place in the FedExCup standings, and his point lead over Phil Mickelson starting the Playoffs would increase from 250 to 750 points.

Vijay Singh picked up 500 reset points with his victory at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, and could pick up another 625 reset points with a victory at the PGA Championship, by moving from sixth to third in the standings.

Virtually any PGA TOUR member in the field would move inside the top 30 on the points list with a victory, and most would move inside the top 15. Not only would such a victory provide great momentum for that player going into the Playoffs, it would also provide a huge boost to his chances, based on giving him a dramatically better seed to start the Playoffs.