Five Out of Four, Plus Three

The reason for the weird title is simple. There were two unrelated events I wanted to mention today and that's the best title I could come up with. So sue me.

First off, the Sanderson Farms Championship finally finished up. Peter Malnati became the fifth straight first-time winner on the PGA Tour this season in only four weeks (hence my title). So for those of you debating whether Spieth, Day, McIlroy or Fowler will dominate in 2016, you now know NONE of them will win, not even once...

For clearly, 2016 has already been declared a "first-timers only" zone.



And then there was the rather complex announcement of the new Charles Schwab Cup Playoffs on the Champions Tour, scheduled to begin next year. Here's the video of Tim Finchum with the details from Monday's Morning Drive:



You can get all the details from the video clip. But here's the new playoff setup:

• 72 players will make it to the new Powershares QQQ Championship, which will be cut to
• 54 players for the new Dominion Charity Classic, culminating with
• 36 players (up from the current 30) going to the final event, the Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

The events will be held in Los Angeles, California; Richmond, Virginia; and Scottsdale, Arizona. That means the players will be leaping from one coast to the other for three weeks. But it should end the possibility of someone locking up the Cup before the last event is ever played, since you know they intend to create something like the FedExCup race -- which means there will most likely be a points reshuffle before the final event.

You can read a bit more about the Triple-Q at vcstar.com, and about the Dominion at richmond.com. Given the new 20-year sponsorship deal with Schwab, an overhaul like this makes perfect sense.

The photo of Peter Malnati came from this page at golf.com.