It's do-or-die time for winless Tiger

Tiger Woods starts today's BMW Championship at The Dubsdread Course at Cog Hill in Lemont, Ill., knowing he needs a top-five finish to advance to Atlanta and the Tour Championship.

Crunch time has arrived for golf's No. 1-ranked player and if he is to salvage what to date has been basically a lost season, he must do it starting today on a course where he has won five times. He's coming off a strong showing in the Deutsche Bank Championship in which in finished tied for 11th while posting three rounds in the 60s for the first time in a winless season.

Woods, currently ranked 51st in the FedEx Cup points race, is one of 70 players seeking to win the third event in PGA Tour's playoffs. Thirty will earn enough points to advance to the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in two weeks and by doing so gain exemptions into the first three majors of 2011 if they're not already eligible.

But only five of them will reach East Lake in control of their destiny when the FedEx Cup points are reset after this weekend. If any of the top five players in reset points wins the Tour Championship, they will automatically win the FedEx Cup title and the $10 million bonus that comes with it. Matt Kuchar, Charley Hoffman, Steve Stricker, Jason Day and Luke Donald enter this week at the top five players, respectively, in FedEx Cup points.

What should make the BMW Championship a little bit more exciting is there is no cut, so players will have nothing to lose by getting aggressive. Even so, only Marc Leishman, who tied for second, and Donald, who tied for 10th, gained a ticket to the final dance from outside the top 30 last year. For Sergio Garcia (T6), Camilo Villegas (T8), Bill Haas (T10), Kuchar (T10) Brandt Snedeker (T10) and Mark Wilson (T10), finishing in the top 10 didn't punch their tickets.

While Woods will no doubt have the pedal to the metal in an effort to secure a top-five finish, it would be understandable if the FedEx Cup leaders aren't more focused on simply maintaining their top-five status if a victory at Cog Hill becomes out of the question.

"That's kind of the magic number," Donald said on the eve of the BMW Championship's first round. "If you can get to the Tour Championship still in that (top-five) position, then obviously you have the FedEx Cup kind of in your hands, so to speak."

That sounds a lot like a NASCAR driver jockeying for position in the race for the Sprint Cup doesn't it? Which should be no surprise. The PGA Tour copied NASCAR's playoff model to some extent just to keep fans interested in the golf once college and pro football took center stage at this time of the year.

Regardless, it should be fun watching the third act of the PGA Tour's playoffs unfold. The BMW Championship can be seen on the Golf Channel (today: 3-6 p.m.; Friday: 3-6 p.m.) and NBC (Saturday: 12-3:30 p.m.; Sunday: 2-6 p.m.).

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