Dollar Days

Call the FedEx Cup what you will, but strike “bogus” from your vocabulary. It would be difficult to imagine the PGA Tour, after juggling numbers and dodging harpoons for three years, could have choreographed a more telegenic playoff conclusion than what unfolded at East Lake GC on golf’s oft-edited version of Super Sunday. There stood the two stars who drive the bus—Tiger Woods holding the FedEx Cup for overall postseason excellence and Phil Mickelson clutching his trophy for winning the Tour Championship after a brilliant fourth-round 65—with not a flat tire in sight. Whoa, critics might say. Not so fast. It still isn’t legit if the guy who finishes second for the week finishes first for the month, but no less a big-picture thinker than the always ethereal Mickelson smothered that notion.

“I didn’t deserve to win the entire FedEx Cup, just based on one tournament,” announced the left-hander, collector of $1.35 million for his first victory since March, plus a $3 million consolation prize as runner-up in the points derby to Woods, who snagged the $10 million jackpot. If there’s a flaw in the system—if—Tiger exploited it fair and square, as Mickelson explained. “The best player won,” he said, “the guy who played the best in all four events won.”

As golf’s dual stimulus packages stood beside each other on the 18th green, waiting for the next wave of flashbulbs and photo ops with corporate wonks donning blue blazers, one could use the pause to ponder levels of interest in play here.

There are a pair of those, too. Golfers will tell you, just in case you didn’t hear it the first hundred times, that there are four majors, and everything else is background music. Golf fans, and marginal fans, also know this, but that does not preclude them attending, watching or following other events, especially when the world’s most famous athlete is involved. Playoff TV ratings clearly indicate people care about September golf with Tiger, not as a substitute for majors but as additional entertainment. This is show biz, and even if $10 million doesn’t ring your bell, leader boards such as Sunday’s will. After three years the FedEx Cup is not perfect, because no playoff formula is. But there is life to the concept.

Mickelson did not envision having much of a role in this script, not after walking away from the BMW Championship in Chicago last month with little to show for his effort but a hotel bill. He sought ideas from veteran caddie Jim Mackay, who was also frustrated.

“Phil had maybe his best ball-striking round of the year at the first playoff event, Barclays, and where did he wind up?” said Mackay. (Answer: T-52.) “It was my putting,” Mickelson recalled. “It’s been my putting for two years out here, basically. So Bones came up with Dave Stockton. Great putter all of his career, similar style to me, right down to the style of the putter he used. I wound up phoning him, and luckily, he winds up being near my home in San Diego during my week off.”

Mackay marvels at how quickly and thoroughly his boss assimilates information, but Mickelson asserts this crash course was different because it felt like riding the bicycle he used to ride when he was young and carefree. Mickelson made 416 feet of putts over 72 holes—half of which he one-putted—justifying the buzz he felt even after Thursday’s 73, which included a quadruple-bogey 8 on the 14th hole.

Sunday’s masterpiece was all about his new/old stroke, even when he wasn’t sinking a 12-footer for birdie on No. 9 to polish off a front-nine 31. As Mickelson says, as they all say, when you have confidence on the greens, pressure is reduced exponentially elsewhere. Indeed, just like Phil the Thrill of yore, he almost holed his wedge on No. 8 and then chipped in from the fringe at No. 16—his 20th birdie of the week—before calmly closing with a couple of pars for a nine-under 271, three fewer than Woods.

Tiger, meanwhile, endured the quietest Sunday possible this side of watching football on his couch at home. He was in the lead twosome with Kenny Perry, and if they were feeding off each other, the meal was cold porridge. Perry did not have it and took 74 whacks, 10 more than he required Saturday. Woods was the 30th and last man Sunday to record a birdie, at the 15th, but his 5 o’clock lightning was too little and too tardy.

Tiger talked occasionally about his troubles judging slope versus grain on a set of East Lake’s greens that were so firm, Mickelson thought the Sub-Air coordinator might have forgotten to turn off that big sucker. With 70, Tiger was runner-up by a stroke, his ninth first- or second-place finish of 2009. “It means I was consistent,” said Woods, who projected that he would feel better about not winning in a few days, when the $10 million showed up in his bank account.