The Break: If you can't beat Rory, change the system

Hi everyone! So Rory McIlroy isn’t playing in Memphis, and all of a sudden, folks are upset.

Rory passes on the playoff opener

Rory McIlroy is the only one of the 70 players eligible to compete in this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship that has opted out of playing in the FedEx Cup playoff opener. Some people are big mad about it, spurring talk of a McIlroy Rule that would compel players to compete throughout the playoffs to collect from the Tour Championship purse.

This is insane.

McIlroy comes into the playoffs ranked second in the points standings, with a lead of about 850 points over third-place Sepp Straka. With the winner in Memphis earning 2,000 points, a pure runner-up earning 1,200 points and a no-ties third-place finisher earning 760 points, McIlroy will be no worse than fourth in the points heading into the second leg at Caves Valley in Maryland next week. And there are scenarios where no one passes McIlroy at all.

Basically, there’s little incentive for McIlroy to play four days of golf in 90-plus-degree heat at a course he probably doesn’t love. He has more money than he’ll ever need. He just won $10 million on Sunday by finishing second in the regular-season points list, and he didn’t have to pick up a club to do it. He’s won some $65 million in his career in the playoffs. He’s good on cash.

McIlroy said heading into this year that he intended to play less, closer to 20 times. Good luck doing that in a Ryder Cup year. He’s on track to slightly pass that number, and so he’s using this week as an opportunity to take a rest. He’ll play the BMW Championship, the Tour Championship, the BMW PGA Championship and Amgen Irish Open on the DP World Tour, as well as the Ryder Cup and the season finale in Dubai. Fine by me.

The FedEx Cup, while incredibly lucrative and great for the PGA Tour to maintain relevance right into Week 0 of college football, isn’t a major, The Players or the Ryder Cup. It’s not a legacy thing so much as, McIlroy has said, an entertainment product. If the PGA Tour wants a system where missing a playoff event has consequences, change the format. Don’t make participation compulsory. Instead, have a system that eliminates players more harshly — like a true playoff.

Short of that, if McIlroy is there for the bulk of the playoffs, that’s good enough.

Besides, Scottie Scheffler is playing.

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The Links

Check out the latest episode of our series, The Road to French Lick, where we hear from Utah Championship winner Julian Suri and talk to his coach, PGA Tour veteran Skip Kendall.

The DP World Tour has teamed up with a crypto firm, Nexo, which is also sponsoring the new event played this week at Donald Trump’s Aberdeen course in Scotland, to award a cash prize to players who set a course record in any round on the circuit.

If you have a chance this weekend, tune into Golf Channel’s coverage of the US Women’s Am out at Bandon Dunes. The place just looks incredible on TV. I was supposed to visit for the first time in April 2020, and then the world fell apart. Still haven’t made it there. One day!

What a small world

I’m down in South Carolina for a bit, visiting some family here in Myrtle Beach. As it turned out, one of my in-laws’ best friends’ sons was in town with his family at the same time. So, we decided to tee it up. We wound up at Grande Dunes’ Member Course, a fun course I hadn’t yet played.

When we checked in, we were told a single had booked up to join us. You never know what you’re going to get with a single, and we were kind of surprised someone latched on at the last minute. But we’d make it work.

Turns out, the guy, who was a total stranger to us, went to high school with my mother-in-law and splits time between Myrtle Beach and a place about 20 minutes from my house. I know that Myrtle Beach is a magnet to East Coasters, but c’mon. He was a great guy, and we had a fabulous time.

Not too long ago, there was some very online discussion from some bro-golf podcast that lamented getting paired up with a random single at the golf course. Truly, it’s one of my favorite things about the game. I owe my life to golf in a lot of ways. I’ve met countless people and formed lifelong relationships with them because we spent 4 or 5 hours together on a golf course. My in-laws pretty much collectively love golf, and being part of their annual golf trip for the last two-ish decades has brought so much joy.

Knowingly or not, it takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there for public consumption and play golf with strangers. Doing it well, making friends and growing as a person in the process is a skill that can pay off in spades, either personally, professionally or both.

I realize that not everyone is so inclined to go a new place and meet new people and find that to be a good time. But if you can do it, you’ll be all the richer for it.