ATLANTA -- You know the old saying: Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
Dustin Johnson? Oh, he's just good -- no luck necessary. OK, he's better than good. Already this year, his three victories include a major and a WGC event. Now he might be 18 holes away from a fourth title at the season-ending Tour Championship.
The PGA Tour? Well, they're just lucky. Or at least they will be if Johnson can clinch the win Sunday afternoon -- and every other important trophy in the process.
With a victory, Johnson -- who is tied for the 54-hole lead with Kevin Chappell and 2 strokes ahead of Rory McIlroy and Ryan Moore -- will claim both the tournament title and the FedEx Cup to go along with his no-doubt-about-it Player of the Year award as voted on by his peers.
It's a good look for the PGA Tour, as the system isn't necessarily set up to reward the best player and yet, that's exactly what it will do for the second consecutive year.
"That's ideally what the PGA Tour will have," said Jordan Spieth, who swept those awards last year, "but I don't think the system is set up for that. Honestly, the system is quite the opposite, but I think it's worked the last couple of years. It happens in every sport. The Patriots went undefeated and lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl."
We collectively understand it better in other sports. Teams make the playoffs, then compete against each other and the winner is the champion -- even if that team wasn't the best one during the course of the season.
Maybe because there's no head-to-head matches, or maybe because a player can win the entire FedEx Cup without winning the last event -- or any event, really -- that we struggle more with the idea that a PGA Tour playoff champion can be someone other than the best player of that season.
It doesn't always work out that way. Actually, it more frequently doesn't work out that way.
Two years ago, Billy Horschel won the final two playoff events to claim a deserving FedEx title -- but there was little argument in favor of him as the best player of the season.
Same for the previous two years, when Henrik Stenson and Brandt Snedeker each double-dipped for hardware here at East Lake Golf Club. And the two years before that, too, when the winners of both trophies were Bill Haas and Jim Furyk.
We have to go all the way back to 2009 for the last time players split these two honors. That year afforded us one of the game's most awkward photos of all time, with Tiger Woods holding his FedEx Cup trophy while standing next to Phil Mickelson holding his Tour Championship trophy.
That's what we'd call a bad look for the PGA Tour -- even if it's exactly how the system is set up.
If they don't get lucky, it could happen again.
While the dream scenario, the one with no controversy or lamentation over the end result, is a singular player sweeping the end-of-season trophies to put a neat little bow around the campaign, the so-called nightmare scenario is still very much at play.
If Chappell wins the tournament, but Johnson finishes in the top eight, they'll each get a trophy. If Moore wins, Johnson only needs to be in the top seven. If McIlroy wins, Johnson will need a solo second-place finish in order to claim the FedEx Cup title.
Think about that: There's a very plausible scenario in which one of the world's best players can take two of the final three playoff events, then stand next to Johnson for an awkward post-round photo op while each raises his respective trophy in triumph.
That's probably not what the PGA Tour's executives want, but the way the system is set up, that's what they might get.
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
The PGA Tour will get lucky once again if Johnson is as good for the season's final 18 holes as he's been all year. If not, Sunday afternoon could offer the first split trophy ceremony in seven years, as awkward as that might be.