LOS CABOS, Mexico – Maverick McNealy has a beautiful mind.
A few months ago, he was perplexed at what appeared to him to be an inequity in the FedEx Cup points given for majors, signature events, regular events and opposite field events. It was a topic that caused plenty of heartburn among players – particularly the rank and file trying to keep their card – and best exemplified by Lanto Griffin who told Golfweek last fall, “Give them all the money they want but when you start giving them the points, I’ve got a problem with that. Do you know what fifth in an elevated event next year makes in FedEx Cup points? 300. It’s 110 for a normal event. So I go play Torrey Pines with 156 players and a cut and Rory goes to L.A. the next week in a 78 players, no-cut field, and he gets nearly three times the points for the same finish. How is one going to compete with that?”
Griffin knew intuitively that something was out of whack; McNealy went a step further and did the math.
“It was a personal exploration,” McNealy called it. “I didn’t think the points were equitable and a bunch of guys felt the same way.”
What he found confirmed his beliefs and he eventually shared his findings with the PGA Tour and the Player Advisory Council, who proposed an adjustment to the FedEx Cup points distribution table that, if approved at the Tour’s upcoming board meeting on Nov. 18, would take effect in 2025.
“He’s a genius, dude,” said Camilo Villegas, the chairman of the PAC this year. “He dug into the numbers and came up with what he thinks is a lot more fair way. We studied the whole situation, and it is fairer, so I give him credit for that.”
The Tour’s focus in determining the points distribution across a variety of events was solely on creating a system that matched historical retention rates across the top 50, 70 and 125. It’s a small sample size but the system seemed to achieve that goal, but as McNealy illustrated, it simply wasn’t rewarding play uniformly.
McNealy, a 29-year-old Stanford graduate, said it was looking at the results of Canadian pro Corey Conners that initially sent him down this rabbit hole.
“In back-to-back weeks, he finished sixth at the RBC Canadian Open and had a two-way T-20 at the Memorial. So he earned 100 points at Canadian and he got 97.5 at the Memorial. I was like, ‘Hold on a sec. That doesn’t seem right,’” McNealy said.
McNealy sought to use as an objective mathematical measurement to determine if the points was equitable and settled on using Data Golf’s True Strokes Gained, which he described as an apples-to-apples comparison across any tournament and any tour while accounting for how much a player beats the field average, how strong the field is and the size of the field.
“So Corey’s true strokes gained according to Data Golf was plus 2.78 at the RBC Canadian, and plus 1.78 at the Memorial. So he was a full shot better and earned the same number of points in the regular event versus the signature,” McNealy explained.
He crunched the numbers for each tournament and this is what he discovered: “Basically, the guys in the majors played better to earn 300 points than the guys did, but otherwise it’s pretty equitable. The guys who finished with 100 points in the signature events played worse than the guys who earned 100 points in the regular, opposite and major fields. So basically it told me that from 100 to 60-ish (points), the signature events were getting way too many points.
“If you play the same quality of golf, no matter what tournament you’re playing, you should get the same number of points. The purse should be different because obviously, you know, Signature events, you’re rewarding guys who have really good years, but I think just because you finished top 50 doesn’t mean you should earn more points the following year than the guy who played just as well.”
McNealy shared his research with his caddie at the time, his swing coach, his stats guru, his agent and one or two other people. It didn’t take long for it to go viral on the Tour.
“I was shocked,” McNealy said. “It felt like a month, month and a half later most people on Tour had seen it. I sensed an overwhelming frustration with ‘I feel like I’m playing better, but I’m not getting as much points as that guy in that tournament.’ And so I think everyone’s kind of thinking this and wanting an answer. And guy’s were like, ‘Hey, look, I was right.’”
That included Griffin, who said of McNealy, “he’s a lot smarter than us. He proved what we already knew but did it in a way with numbers that the Tour had no choice but to make a change. It was awesome.”
McNealy previously had turned down the chance to be on the PAC, but with the encouragement of his wife, he joined the 16-man committee in July, filling the seat formerly held by Grayson Murray.
“I started to see all the things that were changing. It felt like things were getting away from us, moving a little too fast. She said, ‘You should get in there and say your peace,’” McNealy said.
He presented his mathematical formula to massage the FedEx Points table and the Tour essentially adopted it.
“The Tour was incredibly responsive. They worked through the data, ran simulations, did their own research and came to the same conclusion,” he said. “They just smoothed out the curve; I’m totally on board with what they’re doing. I think it’s correct.”
Among several controversial changes that have been proposed for the Board to vote on at its upcoming meeting, McNealy’s points change might garner the most support of the Tour membership. The proposal calls for a slight increase to second-place points for majors and the Players and a slight decrease to points in positions 11 and beyond and a slight decrease to signature event points in positions seven and beyond.
“For the first time ever, guys will be teeing off on Jan. 1 with the same opportunity,” McNealy said if the change is approved. “It should be a lot better.”
