He leaves today the FedexCup grand ball, a final of 67 million dollars for the 120 players qualified for the 4 tournaments of the Playoffs. Number one in the standings is Rory McIlory, the 25-year-old Northern Irishman who this season won, among other things, two majors, the Open Championship and the Pga Championship. Rory will try to match Henrik Stenson's feat, the Swede who, last year, managed to win the Fedex title and after a few weeks that of the Race to Dubai, with the final series of tournaments that close the European circuit. On this occasion Rory will also try to emulate Tiger Woods, the only champion who has managed to win the Fedex starting in the lead. An event that dates back to 2009: last year Tiger also started as leader, but after four races he finished second behind Stenson.
Theater of this first playoff tournament (the Barclays), is the Ridgewood Country Club of Paramous, in New Jersey, a 27-hole complex designed in 1929 by AW Tillinghast.
Defending the title is Adam Scott, who arrives at Paramous as world number two, overshadowed in recent months by the extraordinary performances of McIlroy.
Tiger is missing instead, who played very little in the 2014 season, due to a herniated disc that started hurting at Barclays last year, even causing him to kneel midway through a hole. An injury that forced him to undergo surgery at the end of March and a long convalescence, from which he still doesn't seem to have recovered. His last appearances were very unsatisfactory and the tiger was not able to win even the points needed for the Playoffs. This does not mean that he remains optimistic about the future, as he said a few days ago in a public meeting in New York for Nike, together with Rory McIlroy with whom he shares the sponsor.
After that appointment, however, the paths of the two champions divided, Tiger returned home while world number one Rory moved just a few miles away for this stunning 4-race marathon, structured as follows: from today to Sunday the Barclay will be played among the top 120 players in the Fedex standings; 100 of these 120 will qualify for the Deutsche Bank Championship which will be played from 29/8 to 1/9; this new selection will reduce the next field to 70 players for the BMW Championship (September 4-7); finally, only the top 30 will survive for the Tour Championship by Coca Cola (September 11-14). In the first three races the players will bring with them the points accumulated during the year, to which the (highest) points that will be awarded in the playoffs will be added. In the last challenge, however, everything will be reset and the points will be distributed again so that all 30 participants have a chance of winning. There is a mountain of money up for grabs: 35 million for the FedEx Cup and 32 million for the four tournaments, with a prize pool of eight million dollars each. This too obviously makes the PGA the most coveted circuit, to which all the best European players dream of accessing, sooner or later. Matteo Mancassero wanted to do it in 2015, but unfortunately he didn't make it, also missing the cut last week at Wyndham. In the same tournament, won by Camilo Villegas, Francesco Molinari instead achieved another good placement (24th) and if he wanted to enter the PGA he could probably do so.
On the European front, meanwhile, this week the Czech Masters, on the course of the Albatross Golf Resort in Vysoký Újezd, near Prague. Andrea Pavan is the only Italian on the field; the Molinari and Manassero brothers are resting, waiting to do their best at the 71st Italian Open, which begins next week in Turin.
