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Despite hopes, FedEx Cup not on par with majors

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Robert Lusetich

After more than 20 years of covering everything from election campaigns to Olympic Games, Robert Lusetich turned his focus to writing about his first love — golf. He is author of Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season. MORE>>
Updated Sep 27, 2009 10:20 PM ET
     
 

ATLANTA

Despite the persuasive efforts of the apparatchiks of Ponte Vedra Beach, men and women whose devotion to the promotion of the FedEx Cup shames even the Jesuits, the Tour Championship isn't the Holy Grail. The final tournament of the four-event playoffs isn't even the Super Bowl. While Tour commissioner Tim Finchem successfully pitched this idea to corporate America — confirmation, if any was needed, that this is a man who could sell smog to Los Angeles — his Jedi mind tricks don't work on everyone. "No, it's not (like the Super Bowl)," acknowledged Tiger Woods after playing nine holes Wednesday at a still soggy East Lake. "Golf is a little bit different. The nature of our sport is a little bit different in that regard. You try and have this season-ending championship be our big event, but there's four other ones that are pretty big, too." That, my friends, is Tiger-speak for "this ain't no major." What it is, however, is a nice earner for the Big End of town. More to the point, winning the FedEx Cup will be worth exactly the $10 million at stake this weekend. Woods is the likely recipient of that prize money, even given the PGA Tour's dabbling in socialism.
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For the first two years of its life, the fat lady had sung her FedEx Cup tune before the playoffs even got into the 'hood of Atlanta. Woods won the inaugural Cup in a canter, while last year, with Woods recovering from knee surgery, Vijay Singh redefined sporting anticlimax, needing only to safely tee off at East Lake to guarantee his extra ten large. This year would've been another likely Woods victory except that the PGA Tour, looking to guarantee (or, to be more accurate, manufacture) excitement, chose to reset the points after the BMW Championship in Chicago two weeks ago. So instead of enjoying a 1,500-plus-point lead, Woods now leads Steve Stricker by only 250 points. Any of the top five players — Zach Johnson, Jim Furyk and Heath Slocum are the others — can win the Cup with a victory at East Lake and everyone in the field has at least a mathematical chance of winning the $10 million if, for them, the planets align correctly. Whether Finchem's number crunchers have gone too far will remain to be seen. Imagine the outrage, for instance, if Jim Furyk, who hasn't won a tournament in two years, finishes second to any player not in the top eight and hijacks the Cup with Woods finishing fourth. It could happen.
"Golf is a little bit different. ... You try and have this season-ending championship be our big event, but there's four other ones that are pretty big, too."
— Tiger Woods
"I'm certainly not uncomfortable with the idea that a player could come from a reasonably good year without winning a tournament and win the Cup," said Finchem, who is a lawyer by training if you might be wondering. "It would be odd to try to somehow legislate against that." Even Furyk had to concede that he didn't think that "someone should be able to win the championship without winning a golf tournament." Not that he'd be giving the money back. "It could happen but at the end I'd have to sit here and look at y'all and say, 'It's not my damned fault,' " he said. "I'd be like Sylvester, I just swallowed a Tweety bird and that would put a big smile on my face." Woods didn't sound totally despondent about the prospect of not winning the Cup. He's got six quality wins during this comeback season and it seems that's good enough for him.
"There are a lot of things at stake this week, but as far as my season is concerned, I think I've had a very good season, a very consistent one, and one I'm very proud of," he said. Just what would it mean to him to win the FedEx Cup? "It means that I've had a very consistent year," Woods said. "And I played well at the end, because you have to do that." It wasn't difficult for Woods to hold back his emotions while mouthing those words. Woods was in something of a hurry Wednesday — a Nike event to press some flesh at — so his time before the hacks of the Fourth Estate was limited, but we did learn that he's not one to get nervous on a golf course. He could, for instance, be standing over a putt on Sunday to win both the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup, a putt worth $11.35 million. "When you hit a putt like I did in 2000 (at the PGA) to get into a playoff for the opportunity to win three straight majors and do something that hadn't been done since Hogan, when you're over that putt, all you think about is where you're playing that ball," he said. "All the other stuff takes care of itself. It's nothing else but starting that ball on that line with the correct speed. That's it. "When I had that putt last year at the U.S. Open to get into a playoff, again, it was all about starting the ball on that line and making that putt." When it was put to him that most people would melt because they'd think about the consequences of the putt, Woods looked genuinely puzzled. "Why? You have plenty of time after," he said. Woods, a sports junkie, was at his most animated when he spoke about being on the sideline for Monday night's Colts-Dolphins game. He was in Miami as a guest of his friend, Peyton Manning. "It's just amazing the speed and how fast a decision he has to make," said Woods, who played in a pro-am with Manning at Charlotte earlier this year. "I mean, the Colts, their defense is not the most powerful defense, so he has to score just about every single opportunity, and he does. "You know he's got to throw it and you still can't stop him. That's impressive." More impressive, of course, when it's done on the biggest of stages, like the Super Bowl. Which this isn't.

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