Your perspective on play-offs, even how you choose to spell playoffs, may depend on where you're from. It is fair to say that they are not a particularly important part of sport in the UK, even if both rugby codes and one darts tournament have embraced them. Try it in football's Premier League and there would be a revolt.
In the United States, they're normal, and so 18 years ago in the United States, the PGA Tour built their version. After the regular season ended, Tiger Woods had his 30,574 points converted to an even 100,000. Vijay Singh had his 19,129, two-thirds the haul of the leader, converted to 99,000. Winners of the first three events received 9,000 and Tiger was one of them, so when he won 10,300 more at the TOUR Championship, he also won the FedEx Cup.
Three times a FedEx Cup champion and never with the assistance of starting strokes, he's cut this course down to size several times over the years and I doubt the changes played too much of a part in his slightly underwhelming effort 12 months ago.
Fast forward a year and he returns having won at Pebble Beach, Sawgrass and Augusta in what by any measure has been a fabulous campaign, one with plenty left to play for given his determination to win an away Ryder Cup for the first time since 2012, and no doubt capture another Race to Dubai.
He's further down the ball-striking stats than we'd all like and expect him to be, but the Swede is striping it again after a mid-season lull. In particular, his irons have started to fire, and having lost more than half a stroke per round from January to May, he's more than a full shot better since then at +0.67 for the last 10 weeks.
With his driver typically reliable – he's only lost strokes twice in 19 starts this year and in none of his last eight – Aberg is showing the sort of tee-to-green class that will be needed to compete at East Lake, where he was a modest 19th on debut despite being one of the best drivers in the field, ranking third.
That was largely due to ranking near last in putting and outside the top 20 in strokes-gained approach, but both those aspects of his game fired in the BMW Championship when seventh last week, his third top-10 finish in four starts. But for one nightmare hole at Portrush, he might well be on a run of four.
That represents Aberg's most consistent form of the season and he seems very close to capturing a fourth professional title, which could come this week or else perhaps at Wentworth next month.
Aberg said on Saturday: "I'm excited about what I've seen so far this week and these last couple of weeks, which is encouraging to me." I'm keen to have him on-side at 16/1 and bigger, with Hovland's driving just too big of a concern along with Morikawa's short-game.
At bigger prices, Akshay Bhatia will arrive on cloud nine after scraping through in 29th place, and with his long-game in good shape could build on a decent debut spin around East Lake last year.
But SHANE LOWRY has shown enough to believe he's being overlooked by the layers, who make him about the 26th most likely winner of the event (30 players). For context, he was 10th in the market for the Open (156 players) and while no doubt deserving of an elevated position there, he's fallen too far here.
Lowry ranks eighth in this field in strokes-gained tee-to-green and I think East Lake is a good fit for him. It's a Donald Ross design somewhat reminiscent of Sedgefield (best of seventh), with echoes of Sawgrass (eighth), and even perhaps Firestone, the long, tree-lined par 70 where he made his stateside breakthrough.
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