T.J.'s Take: Quite a stretch

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Go fire up the coffee pot and have a steady supply of No-Doz on your coffee table. Sit back, relax, but don't snooze in your favorite living room recliner.

T.J. Auclair

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If you so much as blink, you might miss what's sure to be the most exciting stretch of golf in the 2008 season. We've entered that time of year where things start to seem like a blur.

In the next nine weeks, seven scintillating events in golf will be contested. It starts this week at Firestone, where the world's best players will compete in the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational.

Immediately after the Bridgestone Invitational, players head to Detroit for the season's final major at Oakland Hills for the PGA Championship. After that, it's the final regular-season event of 2008, the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro.

A week after that, it's golf's version of March Madness -- "August/September Madness" -- if you will, as the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup kick off.

All season long, players have been accumulating points for a berth in the Playoffs. At the conclusion of the Wyndham Championship, the top 144 players in the season-long FedExCup standings will be eligible for the first postseason-event, The Barclays, which will take place at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.

The Barclays should provide a level playing field since Ridgewood has never hosted a PGA TOUR event. There's no horse for this course yet. That makes it a perfect spot for players on the unfriendly-side of the top-120 in the standings to make a move and secure a spot in the following week's Deutsche Bank Championship in Norton, Mass.

That's what makes the Playoffs so exciting to watch -- instead of simply (well, not exactly "simply" by any stretch of the imagination) grinding to make a cut, many players will be grinding to keep their Playoff hopes alive. You finish outside of the top 120 in the FedExCup standings after The Barclays and you have an undesired vacation because you've been eliminated from the Playoffs.

The atmosphere will intensify with each passing week with a magic number of "30," as in top 30 in the FedExCup standings, which secures a berth in the Playoffs finale -- THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola.

A spot in the Deutsche Bank Championship means that the field of 120 will be trying their darnedest to crack the top 70 in the standings for a spot in the BMW Championship at Bellerive CC in St. Louis, MO.

Much like The Barclays, the top 70 who play their way into the BMW Championship has a golden opportunity to take advantage of a track that no one is familiar with. The last time a big-time golf event was staged at Bellerive was way back in 1992 in the PGA Championship. A World Golf Championships event was supposed to be played at Bellerive in 2001, but was canceled due to the tragic attacks of September 11.

Anyone who walks away from the BMW Championship inside the top 30 in the FedExCup standings is assured either a one or two-week vacation and a chance to claim the $10 million bonus for winning the FedExCup.

Let's talk about that vacation. After the BMW Championship, the PGA TOUR will go dark for one week with no events scheduled.

After that, 12 players from the U.S. and 12 from Europe will do battle in the Ryder Cup at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. The Viking Classic in Mississippi will be contested the same week as the Ryder Cup, but the non-Ryder Cuppers inside the top 30 in the FedExCup standings are likely to be skipping out on that tournament as they prepare for THE TOUR Championship, which tees off on Sept. 25 at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

Were you able to take all that in? To summarize, in the next nine weeks, the game will crown a new World Golf Championships winner, a new major champion and a new FedExCup champion.

Along with the coffee and the No-Doz, you might want to think about investing in an espresso machine too.