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.”
Maverick McNealy of prepares to pl his shot from the fourth tee during the second round of the 2024 World Wide Technology Championship at El Cardonal at Diamante. (Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images)
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…
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