Jordan Spieth catches FedEx Cup playoff fever!

Jordan Spieth — you won two major titles this year and just missed wining the calendar-year grand slam and the so-called American slam. So just how psyched are you to kick off the 2015 FedEx Cup playoffs this week at The Barclays?

“I put winning the FedEx Cup below a major championship. I don’t think anybody holds it to the same level necessarily as far as players,” Spieth told reporters Tuesday from Plainfield Country Club, the site of the first of the season-ending, four-game series the PGA Tour insists on calling “playoffs.”

(The convoluted points system and other flaws with what Geoff Shackelford terms the “Reset Cup” have been well-documented. So we’ll move on after wondering yet again how a player — Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia, among others this year — can miss a leg and still make it to the finals.)

Spieth, No. 1 in the world since finishing second 10 days ago at the PGA Championship, certainly wants to prevail at the Tour Championship finale, what with the $10 million jackpot at stake and all. He just believes the math doesn’t necessarily add up.

“I could finish solo second and I think still win -- no, that’s not true. Top five wins,” he said about the vagaries of the points system enabling any of the top five players entering the grand finale to take home the trophy.

That happened when Phil Mickelson won at East Lake in 2009 but lost the the cup to Tiger Woods. The same fate befell McIlroy, who won two straight FedEx Cup events in 2012 but watched Brandt Snedeker pocket the cash.

“It’s something that obviously everybody wants to win, there’s no doubt about it,” Spieth, who sits atop the FedEx Cup standings by 1,710 points over his nearest challenger, newly minted PGA champ Jason Day. “But I think it’s a little odd that it just completely resets, because if you want it to be the true champion of the year, it wouldn’t necessarily reset for the final, even if you do make it worth more points throughout the playoffs.”

Spieth was hardly alone in placing the end-of-season play in its rightful place, way below the majors. Notah Begay, who will report on the action from the ground for NBC and Golf Channel, questioned the quirkiness of the way a winner may be crowned next month in Atlanta.

“I think that in certain cases when players have had exceptional years and have gone on even to win the early playoff events but still can’t win the FedEx Cup, like Rory McIlroy did a few years ago, it’s almost difficult to legitimize a playoff series that almost never rewards the best player,” Begay said during a Tuesday conference call. “[The series] is growing, and certainly I don’t want to take away anything from it, but I still think that the major championship run is always going to be the most sought-after goals in our game.”

Playoff fever! Catch it!

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