Westchester Country Club, New York
Courtesy: Golflink.com

The first of the "playoff" events in the FedEx Cup series is in the bag.

Has your pulse stopped racing?

A lot was made of Tiger Woods' withdrawal at the 11th hour due to fatigue.

If the PGA was surprised, they shouldn't have been. The golf season is too long by far; there are tournaments every week for the lion's share of the year.

There is no "off-season" in professional golf anymore.

There are over 35 PGA tournaments this season, alone. Factor in a few international tournaments during the season, a few "can't afford not to go" tournaments in the early winter and some made-for-TV jobs and the schedule is more grueling than a European soccer season.

Now we have the FedEx Cup, a complicated, long-winded method of creating "tension" throughout the season leading up to the final four playoff tournaments.

If you're a golf fan who watches each week, then by the time the FedEx Cup "final four" begin, you're probably golfed out. It would take a super-human effort to stay pumped up after 8 months of golf on TV.

It will, therefore, be interesting to see what the ratings numbers are like for the telecasts.

If you're a pro, well, it's a whole other story. After grinding for much of the past 8 months, you are now faced with fighting to get through each of the final four tournaments by "making the cut" into the next one.

Again, a super-human effort is required of a tour pro to find the mental stamina, let alone the physical stamina, to stay focused. And all this after the season's four majors, thank you.

It's no wonder many of the pros apparently are just not interested in the FedEx Cup. If they can keep track of where they are in the points standings, they then have to deal with "re-seeding" in the final four, which is the PGA's devilish way of making the "Race to the Cup" more interesting by tightening up everyone's scores.

Think of it as Jeff Gordon leading a NASCAR race by five car lengths over, say, Tony Stewart with two laps to go in a 500 miler when a caution flag waves and the field bunches up for the re-start.

But caution flags happen out of the blue in NASCAR; the PGA Tour has artificially created one for the playoffs.

However, the kicker really is if you win the FedEx Cup, the huge payoff of millions of dollars doesn't arrive in your mailbox until you officially retire!

So, the PGA - via tournament sponsors - offers big money each week and players work hard to win a share of it; but the really big prize of 10 million dollars to the winner doesn't come until his playing days are well over.

How can a player get excited about winning now and getting paid in 20 odd years?

Players who finish second through 30th can share in the other 25 million dollars in bonus money that's available, to be sure.

Big numbers, no doubt. But we're all used to that in professional golf.

Where does the excitement come from? I'm hard pressed to see it.