First FedEx Cup Chase Begins on PGA Tour at Mercedes

The 2007 PGA Tour season begins today with the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii. And it also marks the beginning of the first FedEx Cup season on the PGA Tour.

What is the FedEx Cup? It's a season-long points similar in nature to the Nextel Cup in NASCAR. The basics are pretty simple:

• Each week golfers earn points for their finish in PGA Tour events; those points add up.
• At the end of the "regular season," the Top 144 on the points list move on to the "playoffs."
• Point totals are reset entering the playoffs (100,000 to the leader, 99,000 to second-place, and on down the line) to prevent anyone from running away with the title during the regular season.
• The playoffs are a series of four tournaments culminating in the Tour Championship, after which the FedEx Cup points champion is crowned and awarded $10 million from a $35 million prize pool.

It's important to note that the FedEx Cup does not change anything about the basic structure of the PGA Tour itself. The money list still determines playing status; the Player of the Year award is still voted on by golfers or awarded by the PGA, it is not determined by the FedEx Cup.

The FedEx Cup is just another way to add a lot of money to the Tour and - the Tour hopes - build towards an exciting late-summer, early fall period when golf ratings on television are usually falling hard.

I don't believe the FedEx Cup will have a huge impact for fans or for the top golfers. The latter is pretty clear in that both Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are skipping the Mercedes, the first tournament in which points are up for grabs. Both skipped the Tour Championship last year, too. I suspect they'll show up this year, but it's not a given. These guys are so rich, that $10 million bonus for winning the FedEx Cup just isn't that great an incentive. Not so great, at least, that it will definitely woo Woods and Mickelson away from family or other lucrative commitments.

And the major championships will cedrtainly still reign supreme for PGA Tour golfers (and fans). The FedEx Cup might gather the top players together a few more times over the course of the season - but probably not as often as hoped for by the Tour.

But these are questions that will be answered soon enough. Starting today in Hawaii, in fact.

See: FedEx Cup primer