General / Paul Krishnamurty / 26 August 2008 /

'Anyone can win' is the FedEx theory but it doesn't stand up, says Paul Krishnamurty.

The Fedex Cup organisers couldn't really have asked for more - a three-way play-off with two of the game's greats matching each other putt for putt.

Sunday's opening play-off event was thrilling entertainment, and Ridgewood a superb addition to the schedule that's hopefully here to stay. It's hard to recall a course which produced such a mix of very low and very high scores, resulting in a persistently fluctuating leaderboard.

Furthermore, the tweaks made to the scoring system for this second running of the Fedex Cup are an improvement in terms of spicing up the battle to qualify for each event. An extra 2,000 points are available this year just for making the cut - a tremendous incentive for players way down the list in search of a swift transformation in fortunes. That's great news for ranks outsiders like Nicholas Thompson and Matt Goggin, who after one good week find themselves in the top-30 and bad for top stars like Padraig Harrington and Adam Scott, who missed the cut at Ridgewood and are now far from certain to make the final cut.

However, I'm wondering whether the 'anyone can win' mentality has unduly influenced the market, because in my view there is one outstanding bet available - backing the leader and favourite Vijay Singh.

Here's why. It is very true that 'anyone can win' the Fedex Cup. Because of the narrow gap between first and last after the reset, and the 11,000 points available for the winners of the first three play-off events, it was almost certain that the winner at Ridgewood would become overall leader. And of the 30 qualifiers for the Tour Championship finale, anyone starting within 10,500 points of the leader will still have a chance.

But equally, anyone who wins two events is basically certain to win the Fedex Cup. Already over 5,000 points ahead of second-placed Sergio Garcia and 7,500 of the next best, Vijay will have three decent chances to finish the contest early, irrespective of other players' performances. Should he win any of the remaining play-off events his lead will be virtually insurmountable. And if he finishes second in any of them, worth at least 5,400 points, he'd set a very strong target.

If Vijay just makes the cut in the next two events, he'll be guaranteed a minimum final total of 115,670 points but his previous record at the venues concerned suggest he'll get plenty more. At this week's venue, TPC Boston, Singh has won and made the top-four on three of his four attempts. He's also won at the Tour Championship venue, East Lake, and never finished below ninth in seven attempts. In my view, 120,000 looks a realistic score even assuming he doesn't win any of them.

To reach that benchmark, second-placed Garcia would need over 15,000 points and anyone else would require at least 19,000. Realistically, the only way any other player is going to have a chance of surpassing that total is by winning one of the events. And if either of the next two are won by an outsider, or just somebody outside the top-25, they'll still be trailing Singh by some distance as long as the Fijian makes those cuts.

So what price should Singh be? He will start amongst the favourites for all three events to come. He's [15.5] for this week's Deutsche Bank Championship, and couldn't start much bigger in the BMW Championship which will involve 50 fewer players. And he should start even shorter, perhaps single figures, for the final 30-runner Tour Championship. I reckon the combined odds just to win another event is no more than [4.5].

And of course that second win may not be required. There's every chance that the remaining events will produce three different champions, in which case there would be four potential overall winners and Singh would be vying for favouritism amongst any permutation. In my view, all this makes the correct price no more than [2.5]. Yet he traded around [6.6] yesterday, before the price settled around [4.4], which still represents an outstanding trade. At the very least, this is great way of having an interest that will last throughout the remainder of this series.

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