Given how narrow the reset differentials are, does it really matter whether a player is seeded fifth versus sixth? Or even fifth versus 10th?
It may seem at first as though, since the 60th-place person can catch the first-place person with one victory, there’s not much difference between first and 60th … so there certainly isn’t much difference between first and second, or between any two other positions. But that misses the fact that the points curve is steep — to pick up 1,000 points, you have to finish in the top 10 percent of the field in the PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedExCup. To get 2,000, you have to finish fifth or better. So, while it’s true that one or two players who are way back in the field can pass people in the top 10, not very many of them can, which gives a big advantage to players who are already in the top 10. In our simulations, there were generally eight to 10 players who had a chance to win going into the Tour Championship presented by Coca-Cola. Of those eight to 10 players, one or two of them could have come from way back in the field by having great tournaments in the first three events. The rest
