Finally, FedEx Cup playoffs to play decisive role

For a change, the FedEx Cup playoffs, which begin today with the start of The Barclays at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., will likely decide who is voted the best player on the PGA Tour this year.

Unlike past years when the leading contender for PGA Tour Player of the Year was well-established by this point in the season, there is no leading contender. The misadventures of Tiger Woods, whose divorce was announced yesterday, has opened the door to others. Five players have multiple victories -- Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, Steve Stricker, Justin Rose and Hunter Mahan -- but none of them has more than two wins, and none of them won a major.

A year ago, Woods had a 1,276-point lead over Stricker going into The Barclays. This year Els begins the playoffs with a 149-point lead over Stricker. In other words, its wide open.

Phil Mickelson, this year's Masters champion, could do more than supplant Woods as the world's No. 1 ranked player with a victory this week in his eighth attempt over the past three months to do so. He could also emerge as a front-runner for player-of-year honors. But another in a long line of lackluster performances by Mickelson would continue to muddle the picture, which has been exacerbated by the fact that three of this year's four majors were won by non-PGA Tour members -- Graeme McDowell at the U.S. Open, Louis Oosthuizen at the British Open and Martin Kaymer at the PGA Championship.

Furyk, ranked No. 3 in points going into the playoffs, made things more difficult for himself when he was ruled ineligible for The Barclays after oversleeping and missing his pro-am tee time yesterday.

"The rules are rules," Furyk said. "No matter what tournament it was, I'd be upset. But I'm more upset because it is this one. We are here are the end of the (playoffs)."

Furyk has not been a week-in, week-out threat this season and missed the cut in two majors. But he's not alone in needing more on his fact sheet to earn player-of-the-year honors.

Els, who currently is leading the money list and scoring-average category, hasn't done much since winning twice in Florida in March. Stricker went nearly four months without finishing better than tied for 30th. Rose got into the field at only one major and missed the cut. And Mahan had missed four straight cuts before winning the Bridgestone Invitational earlier this month to go along with his victory in Phoenix earlier this year.

So a win this week by any of the two-time winners would go a long way in establishing a player-of-the-year front-runner. But a victory at Ridgewood Country Club won't come easy. The A.W. Tillinghast-designed course is a par-71 track measuring 7,319 yards in length. It features tight fairways lined by tall mature trees and is made difficult by juicy rough 3 inches thick. It also boasts steep-banked bunkers that players will quickly learn are best avoided.

Though the PGA Tour would never admit it, it is probably hoping one of its bigger name players rises to the occasion rather than see a repeat of last year when Heath Slocum came out of nowhere (actually 124th position) to win The Barclays. According to Nielsen, final-round viewership this season through Aug. 1 is down 16 percent. Having someone like Slocum surface to the top again this week probably wouldn't help television ratings.

The PGA Tour steadfastly refuses to admit much concern, insisting that the tour's sponsors are more concerned with the cumulative audience that builds over a tournament, not the "snapshot" developed from averaging viewership over several hours on a Sunday.

By that measure, the PGA Tour's overall golf audience reportedly is down by 3 percent this year. But that figure still might be a difficult sell when the PGA Tour is scheduled to renegotiate its network TV contracts at the end of 2011.

Information from PGATOUR.com, GolfObserver.com and GolfChannel.com contributed to this post.