TOUR Insider: Challenge matches reward in Playoffs

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If major championships are supposed to be hard, then the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup shouldn't be an exercise in ennui, but rather an enervating endeavor where the rewards match the challenge.

And so it is.

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Phil Mickelson has played at Ridgewood Country Club and says it's a great course.

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The second edition of the Playoffs for the FedExCup should entertain as they help ascertain the answer to the yearlong question of who is the PGA TOUR's best golfer in 2008. A scheduling change imposes a slightly less burdensome task on the competitors as the playoffs comprise four events spread over six weeks, with the first three coming in succession. A one-week hiatus precedes the 37th Ryder Cup, and then comes THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca Cola for the top 30 players.

But first, we present the initial elimination tournament, The Barclays. A field of 144 players convenes at rigorous Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., on a composite layout that A.W. Tillinghast authored in 1929. A Ryder Cup, a U.S. Amateur and a pair of Champions Tour majors have been contested at this distinguished.

No one has seen this version, however.

The championship course for the Barclays measures 7,319 yards, par 71. Ridgewood has 27 holes, which have been renovated over the past five years with the help of Gil Hanse, the architect who also has shaken up the design at stop No. 2 in the playoffs, the DeutscheBank Championship at TPC Boston. A composite layout has been cobbled together that features seven holes from Ridgewood's East Course, six from its West Course and five from the Central Course.

This hybrid layout features relatively small, subtly breaking poa annua greens that could run as fast as 11.5 on the stimpmeter, according to course superintendent Todd Raisch, who has been at Ridgewood for 13 years. Raisch reported that the rough was topped off Saturday at 3.5 inches after 1.5 inches of rain fell Friday. The course should dry out, however, and play firm and fast.

And long. A strong wedge player could have an advantage this week not only because the shortest of the three par-5 holes measures 588 yards, and will be hard to reach in two shots, but also because the rough might be penal enough in areas to force players to lay up as they did two weeks ago at the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills Country Club near Detroit.

Birdie opportunities, Raisch said, can be found early in the round and later, at holes 15-17. But the middle of the course, he said, is "brutal, where players just need to hang on." The par-4 18th (regularly No. 9 on the West Course) is a strong 470-yard dogleg right through stands of oak trees that won't offer comfort to the contenders.

While Ridgewood won't administer the same bludgeoning to egos and scorecards that Oakland Hills did, it will weed out weak play.

But, hey, it's the Playoffs. There is $8 million available at each of the four stops, plus a $10 million bonus to the overall winner at the end of the rainbow. Playoffs mean working hard and working overtime. But we recommend it highly; the benefits are outstanding.

FEDEXCUP POINTERS

• Two major wins in a row is giving Padraig Harrington a lot of media support for PGA TOUR Player of the Year honors, but the TOUR Insider thinks the Irishman needs another triumph to overtake Tiger Woods. Just because Mark O'Meara's two majors trumped David Duval's four titles in 1998 doesn't mean a precedent has been set. Duval didn't win a major that year; Woods, in case anyone has forgotten, won the U.S. Open on one leg, plus a World Golf Championship event, among four titles. That being said, Harrington will have, ahem, more of a leg to stand on with voters (fellow TOUR members only) by posting another victory. The Barclays, which he won at Westchester in 2005, might be his best chance.

• We wrote earlier that no one has seen Ridgewood. Check that. No one has seen it in tournament play. Phil Mickelson, No. 2 among active players on the FedExCup points list behind Kenny Perry, played the course in May. Said Mickelson, who has a sponsorship deal with Barclays, "I think it's a wonderful golf course. It's a Tillinghast design, which I'm biased to, and it has a lot of same look and feel as a Baltusrol and Winged Foot. I think the players are going to love it. It's one of the premier courses in the land."

• Steve Stricker, who won the first Playoff event last year at The Barclays, last defended a title in 2002, and like this week, he didn't get the chance on the course on which he won. Stricker won the World Golf Championship-Accenture Match Play Championship in '01 in Australia, and defended at La Costa Resort & Spa. Of his defense at Ridgewood, Stricker said, ""It'll be a little different coming to a place I've never seen before. It'll be kind of weird that it's not the course [where] I won."

• Mike Weir had a new putter built for him by Scotty Cameron the day prior to the PGA Championship, but he waited until Saturday to put it in play. The result: Weir needed 62 putts the first two days and 57 the remainder of the tournament, including 27 in Round 3.

• Speaking of new blades, Ben Curtis, the 54-hole leader at the PGA, had a Scotty Cameron Titleist Studio Select Newport 2 in his bag.

• And J.B. Holmes, who played in the final group at the PGA with Curtis, was using a new Belly Barbados custom-made model from Guerin Rife at Oakland Hills Country Club.

• Since missing the cut at the Wachovia Championship in May, rookie Kevin Streelman has made 11 in a row. A possible key to his streak, he said last week, was getting married. "I've definitely felt a lot more relaxed. To get that off the shoulders was nice," he said.

• With his missed cut at the Wyndham Championship, Vijay Singh has missed five cuts this year, a career high. He also missed consecutive cuts for fifth time in his career. Ironically, three of those five times he missed the cut in the PGA Championship followed by the next event. Singh, winner of the Bridgestone Invitational, has never missed three cuts in a row.

• Dustin Johnson is on a bad roll of late, health-wise, and the DeutscheBank Championship is no longer a lock for the TOUR rookie. He withdrew from the Wyndham Championship after a 3-over-par 73, citing a cut finger. Two weeks prior, at the RBC Canadian Open, he withdrew because of dental problems that led to a root canal.