I hope I never become "that" sports guy. You know, the one who rails against anything new, and constantly tells anyone who will listen (or can't escape) that baseball or football or basketball was so much better "back in my day" (see: Gossage, Goose).
Golf isn't immune from this phenomenon. You hear it a lot this time of year; mostly complaints about the FedEx Cup playoffs.
For those whose glass is half empty, the FedEx Cup playoffs are a pointless month of tournaments at the end of the season, a contrived run that doesn't really decide the best golfer of the year. I won't argue the point. The majors are, and will always be, much more important than the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Take a moment, though, to look on the bright side. Thanks to a new format, this week's Tour Championship is now the richest tournament in golf history, with $70 million added to the prize pool, including a cool $15 million to the winner.
Compare that figure to the U.S. Open, where the entire purse is right around $12 million, with a little over $2 million of that going to the winner.
To me, there's nothing wrong with super-charging the prize money to add some extra drama to the weekend. Arnold Palmer earned $3.6 million in his entire 52-year career on the PGA and Champions Tours. One golfer will walk away with more than 4x that amount of money on Sunday afternoon in Atlanta.
Given the choice between $15 million and a major win, most (if not all) PGA Tour golfers will take the major. That doesn't mean we fans can't enjoy the FedEx Cup playoffs and a little extra tension on Sunday.