Amid all the changes in store for the US PGA Tour in 2007, expect one thing to stay the same: Tiger Woods will again reign supreme.
The season starting with the Mercedes-Benz Championships at Kapalua, Hawaii, on Thursday is being touted by US tour officials as a ”new era” in golf.
The revamped schedule includes the 33-week FedEx Cup season, in which players earn points to make it into the PGA Tour playoffs for the FedEx Cup.
Those four tournaments, ending with the Tour Championship in September, are designed to cap a streamlined season in dramatic style.
”It’s interesting, it really is,” Woods said of the new system. ”It’s so different that we’ve never experienced anything like this before.
”It’s weird in the sense that the points system determines the top 30 but the money list determines whether you keep your card or not. I don’t know, it’ll be very interesting to see the two dynamics there.”
Also in the mix will be the $35-million in bonus money awarded at the conclusion of the playoffs, including a whopping $10-million to the FedEx Cup champion.
Whatever fervour is whipped up by the big money finale, Woods himself promises to remain golf’s most compelling story.
The game’s undisputed heavyweight champion closed 2006 with eight victories and three runner-up finishes in his final 11 stroke-play events, all in the wake of his father’s death in May.
When he launches his 2007 campaign at the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, California, on January 25, Woods will be going for a seventh US tour victory in as many starts.
In April, he will arrive at Augusta National seeking the third leg of the ”Tiger Slam” at the Masters, having won the final two major championships of 2006, the British Open and US PGA Championship.
While Woods rides the crest of a wave into the new season, many of those who would seek to challenge him will be hoping for a fresh start in 2007.
Phil Mickelson, who won his third straight major title at the 2006 Masters, suffered one of the worst meltdowns in major championship history at the US Open, where he had the tournament in hand before a double-bogey at the final hole that handed the victory to Australian Geoff Ogilvy.
Mickelson was barely a blip on golf’s radar the rest of the year, while Ogilvy, despite his increased confidence, was under no illusions as to just how hard it is to challenge Woods.
”You never play well when he’s there, because you try too hard to shoot a score,” Ogilvy noted in December as Woods walked away with the unofficial Target World Challenge title.
Australian Adam Scott, ranked fourth in the world, made it clear that Woods remains the yardstick by which all golfers are measured. He is one of the few young golfers even to voice the aim of supplanting Woods atop the rankings.
”It might take awhile, but if I was to be number one in the world at some point in my career, then I think that would be the best achievement I could ever do in golf, to get past Tiger Woods,” Scott said.
Woods himself acknowledges that his greatest competition is with his own achievements to date.
”My whole deal is just to try to get better and to keep pushing myself to get better each and every year,” Woods says. ”Along the way, I’ll win tournaments.”
Woods’ stature makes his support for the tour’s new format vital for it’s success. He has made no secret of the fact that his main focus remains on winning major titles — his 12 to date putting him two-thirds of the way to Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18.
One potential downside to the new system is that it makes for a grueling finish to the year, especially for top players.
Beginning with the Bridgestone Invitational, the final World Golf Championship event of the year in late July, many players face seven or eight weeks of competition as they move through the PGA Championship, the four FedEx Cup playoff events and, for some, the Presidents Cup.
”It’s going to be hard on all the guys,” Woods predicted. – AFP
