Golfer Xander Schauffele won the Tour Championship yesterday near Atlanta, while Justin Thomas won the $10M FedExCup prize, leading to "plenty of drama but no satisfaction," according to Paul Newberry of the AP. The PGA Tour "must figure out a better way to end its season." Newberry: "It felt downright anticlimactic to have two guys standing alongside the 18th green, divvying up the accolades and the prizes" (AP, 9/25). In N.Y., Karen Crouse writes by the time Schauffele "hit his final drive," the Tour Championship was a "wet blanket that had been wrung dry." Thomas had "already sealed the season-long championship" while there were still four golfers "on the course" (N.Y. TIMES, 9/25). ESPN.com's Bob Harig wrote the "system and format" in which the FedExCup champion is crowned has "always had the opportunity to present some awkwardness, and this is one of the rare times that it did." It is why the '19 schedule change "can't get here soon enough, at least in terms of the FedEx Cup format." By then -- if not next year -- a "new format should be in place that either allows the Tour Championship winner to be crowned FedEx Cup champion, too, or leads to some sort of one-day shootout for the big prize" (ESPN.com, 9/24). However, GOLFDIGEST.com's Ryan Herrington wrote it has "taken a while for the PGA Tour to figure out the right formula to create some intriguing final-round drama" at the Tour Championship, but it has "found it in the current setup" (GOLFDIGEST.com, 9/24).
