Vijay Defends This Week
Courtesy: PGATour.com

It's a brand new year and a brand new season. The Mercedes Championship kicks off the 2008 PGA Tour and it all starts today.

There are those who have written that the Mercedes is an anticlimactic beginning to a new season.

Steve Elling says "The event was created as a reward for winners from the previous year, but with Mickelson and Woods sitting out the week and guys like Garcia and Els having failed to win, the composition is worth revisiting since fans clearly want to watch the stars shine".

A valid point but the field is a lot stronger than Elling indicates. Defending U.S. Open champion, Angel Cabrera is present and accounted for. Steve Stricker, K.J.Choi, Jim Furyk, Scott Verplank, Boo Weekley, Hunter Mahan and Rory Sabbatini are all in the field as is defending Mercedes champion, Vijay Singh.

Many of these players were on their respective President's Cup teams in September. Weekley and Mahan came very close to winning the World Cup of Golf in China recently.

So it's not a field of also-rans like some of the lineups during the Fall Series in '07.

It is an odd lineup, however, given that the Mercedes is comprised of winners from the previous year. Of course, any field feels depleted when neither Phil Mickelson nor the mighty Tiger Woods attends. This year both are missing, by choice and certainly not because they failed to meet the qualifications.

Say, didn't these two guys also skip some FedEx Cup events, citing fatigue and over-work?

The rest of the field are indeed winners on tour so we must respect that.

Ominously, the conclusion of last year's season and the start of this year's season involve The Golf Channel as primary broadcaster. It's ominous because it has all the feel of "don't care" from the other significant broadcasters, CBS and NBC.

So perhaps it's time for the PGA to have a re-think about how the season ends and how (and more importantly, when) it begins.

Heaven forbid that the Golden Goose is growing long in the tooth from overexposure.