Rory Sabbatini and Mark Calcavecchia were among those who thought everyone should compete in all four playoff events. A top-ranked player skipped each playoff event (Woods, Choi, Mickelson) until the Tour Championship, when all 30 made their tee times.
Woods and Jim Furyk lobbied for starting the playoffs with fewer players.
And there was a universal cry for more volatility in the standings each week. Only three players had a realistic chance of winning the FedEx Cup at the Tour Championship, and only four guys who started the playoffs in the top 30 didn't make it to East Lake.
If those are flaws, they seem easy enough to fix.
But each solution carries a potential problem:
1. Make everyone play all four events.
When asked two years ago about all the stars playing four straight weeks, Finchem said, "There aren't any guarantees." There never are in golf, where players set their own schedules. Golf is not about an endurance test. The reason some players go four weeks in a row is because they want to (Vijay Singh) or have to if they want to make up ground for the $10 million prize.
Don't get hung up on who's not there. Woods, Mickelson, Choi, Padraig Harrington, Scott Verplank and Ernie Els played three out of four. Everyone else played four times. Find a field that strong after the majors are over.
To mandate that everyone should be at all four events is to guarantee Woods goes on a really long vacation.
2. Start with fewer players.
Furyk offered the most comical assessment by noting that 125 players keep their cards, but 144 players start the playoffs. But the season began with 225 exempt players, so actually only 64 percent made the playoffs.
The biggest problem with this solution is that short fields make for dull tournaments and a lousy experience for the fans. Consider the 70-man field at Cog Hill, where an entire day of golf was over in six hours. There has to be consideration given to the tournament and its fan base. Plus, it's harder to win against a larger field.
3. More volatility in the standings.
Expect this area to be tweaked, mainly by how points are distributed.
Some thought anyone who finishes in the top 10, no matter where they are ranked, should advance to the next week. Just about everyone cited Beem, who tied for seventh at Westchester and had to finish no worse than second at Boston to keep going. Was that asking too much? No, because Beem had more than seven months to earn a higher seeding.
Even so, the lack of movement took some of the drama away.
Arron Oberholser made the biggest move, starting at No. 72 and finishing at No. 34. He tied for 21st at Barclays and tied for second at the Deutsche Bank Championship, then withdrew from Chicago with injury.
Camilo Villegas went from No. 52 to No. 24 with a record of T21-T9-T7-T9. Brett Wetterich had only one good week, tying for second in Boston, and that carried him from No. 50 to No. 27.
Sabbatini, meanwhile, was the only player to finish in the top 10 in every playoff event. All that did was move him from No. 6. to No. 4. Why so little movement? Because Woods and Mickelson each won, and Stricker moved past him with a victory and a third-place finish.
In other words, the best players in golf played some of their best golf in the playoffs.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
