Jordan Spieth tries the feat: to equal Tiger Woods and win twice the FedexCup, that is the annual American golf championship. The 24-year-old Texan has already crushed the competition in 2015 and this year leads the standings, before the grand final which begins today in Atlanta. The race is the Tour Championship, the one that crowns the king of the 2016-2017 season and gives him a ten million dollar bonus.
The most important match of the year is played by the 30 players who have passed the tough selection of the "Playoffs", the mini circuit of 4 elimination matches. Unfortunately Francesco Molinari is not part of this small world elite; the great Chicco stopped last Sunday, one step away from glory, but he will be able to try again next year, given that he is an effective member of the Pga Tour and number 18 in the world order of merit.
The competition is a normal stroke competition that is played over 4 days, but it is also a competition within a competition, because only at the end of these 72 holes will the final Fedex ranking be drawn up. To leave all the scenarios open, the PGA reset the points accumulated during the season and redistributed them, from the first to the last player, in order to offer all 30 finalists the opportunity to win the most important bonus. However, only the top 5 players are, as they say, “masters of their destiny”. They are the only ones who have the mathematical certainty of winning Fedex by winning the Tour Championship. The others depend on the result of those who precede them.
Spieth is favoured, but prefers not to know scenarios and probabilities: “Honestly – he says – I don't care. I want to go out and try to win the race like always." Just a few points behind him are the likes of Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Marc Leishman and Jon Rahm. This is the youngest top five ever, with an average age of 27 years and 4 months.
Up for grabs are $8,750 million for the Tour Championship (almost $1,6 million for first place) and $35 million for the FedexCup, $10 million for first, $3 million for second, $2 for third, a climbing, up to the 150th place.
The venue of the challenge is the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. The race is without cut, given the small number of admitted and the departures are in pairs, in order of classification: Spieth and Thomas, Johnson and Leishamn, Rahm and Fowler; Rose and Matsuyama; and so on. Among the Europeans on the track also Paul Casey and Sergio Garcia.
