Rory McIlroy's PGA Tour belief ripped apart after unsatisfying Scottie Scheffler conclusion

The PGA Tour's FedEx Cup Playoffs format has come in for fresh criticism after Sunday's Tour Championship failed to provide an exciting finale, despite Rory McIlroy's belief it is the best system for fans.

Scottie Scheffler cruised to victory at East Lake in Atlanta, securing the $25 million title by four shots over Collin Morikawa. Scheffler had been a formidable force throughout the PGA Tour season, bagging his seventh win of the year along with an Olympics gold on his way to topping the tour's season-long order of merit.

The playoff format has faced widespread criticism in recent years. In an attempt to make the season's final event more appealing to TV viewers, Scheffler began with only a two-shot advantage at East Lake – unfitting for his dominance over his competitors in 2024.

Before the format was changed in 2019, Scheffler would have secured the FedEx Cup title weeks before the season's end. Instead, he had to wait until the Tour Championship to confirm his victory. He did so in a manner that ridiculed the tour's attempts to create an exciting conclusion, leading by seven after the first round and never facing a real threat from the competition.

Many critics of the current format would prefer to see the Tour Championship as a standalone event where all players start at level par and the results contribute to shaping the final standings, rather than defining the season entirely. Scheffler began at 10-under and the rest of the 30-man field started between eight-under and level par, based on their FedEx Cup standings.

The system, which places so much emphasis on one event, has often led to the consensus player of the year failing to win the FedEx Cup. This includes 2022 when Scheffler lost the title to Rory McIlroy despite starting the Tour Championship at the top of the standings after winning four tournaments including The Masters.

If the Tour Championship had been a standard strokeplay event and the FedEx Cup format pre-2019 had been used, Scheffler would have still won the season-long title. However, Morikawa would have won the event at 22-under-par, one shot ahead of Sahith Theegala and two in front of the world No. 1.

World No. 3 and three-time FedEx Cup champion McIlroy has voiced his support for the new format, arguing that it makes for more exciting viewing if the FedEx Cup winner is not decided until the final event.

However, two-time DP World Tour winner Eddie Pepperell, a panelist on "The Chipping Forecast" podcast, thinks it would have been much more satisfying to watch if the Tour Championship had been allowed to "stand its own two feet". He described the current version of the FedEx Cup as "meaningless".

"It's not even that it's nonsense, it's just entirely meaningless and one wonders why we are playing this game," he said. "And the way you can tell that is no one really wants the outcome and yet it seems like our only choice is to have the outcome we've got, and it's crazy. And the game will end up losing, I think there'll end up being a pretty catastrophic, at some point, coming down to reality."

"Watching it on Sunday, I just felt sorry for the tournament because if the tournament had existed on its own two feet as such, it would've actually been quite an entertaining finish because Morikawa, Theegala and Scheffler were all on a similar score. The tournament is entirely in service to the season-long race which is crazy because the FedEx Cup as an order of merit, by definition, means the whole season is in service to that and that's how it should be."

"And this is why I fundamentally disagree with people like Rory who quite often [emphasise] the importance of entertainment. Well, you can't keep catering to a society that finds one thing entertaining this minute and something else the next minute. Because if you do, you end up where we are which is entirely lost with a very gimmicky format. And I think it would be very wise for the PGA Tour to go back to something that resembles something we all value and that is merit."

"And the season-long race should be based purely on merit and if Scottie Scheffler wins it three weeks out then that is the thing you celebrate because that is what success looks like."