When $10 million is a lousy consolation prize

The PGA Tour no doubt is giddy from having Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson share the stage at the Tour Championship on Sunday, but Woods unwittingly exposed an inherent flaw in the system: Whatever joy he may have experienced from winning the FedEx Cup was overshadowed by the disappointment of having finished second in the Tour Championship, to Mickelson, no less.

"I think it's just one of those things where obviously I'm a little disappointed I didn't win the championship, because I was right there," he said.

More to the point, if the FedEx Cup is truly a playoff, how is it that the man who finished second in the championship is proclaimed the winner?

It's a great endorsement, as has been noted here and all week by Geoff Shackelford on his blog, for the format once employed by the LPGA for its season-ending ADT Championship.

-- John Strege