FedEx playoffs kick off at The Barclay

BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2008 The Barclays | Preview | 19 Aug 2008

The much vaunted playoff series for the FedEx Cup has finally arrived with The Barclays getting underway on Thursday at the Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus in New Jersey.

The venue is an A.W. Tillinghast design, extensively remodelled in 2007 by Gil Hanse. Highly ranked in US golf course rankings prior to the redesign, the course is due to gain even greater recognition in future years.

After 40 years under various guises at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, the event moves south to a new venue and given its significance as the launch of the FedEx playoff series, attracts one of its best fields.

The course is not new to high class tournament golf however, with a Senior PGA Championship and US Senior Open having been played at the venue in addition to US Amateur Championship and one of the very early Ryder Cup contests.

After the leading 144 players in the FedEx Cup series have had points accumulated in the first 37 events of the 2008 PGA Tour reset, 136 will tee it up with eight players not playing for a range of injury and other reasons. The most notable is of course the 2007 FedExCup Champion, Tiger Woods, but also missing are leading Europeans, Lee Westwood, Justin Rose and Luke Donald.

The Barclays is the first of four FedEx Cup playoff events with the leading 120 point scorers at the completion of this week moving forward to the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston next week. Following that event the leading 70 move to the BMW Championship in Missouri, before the final 30 make head for Atlanta and the Tour Championship.

Not only is US$7 million up for grabs each in each of the four events but a total bonus purse of US$35 million will be distributed amongst those who make all or any of the four events.

Players knocked out this week are assured of a minimum bonus of US$32,000 while those advancing to the top 70 at the BMW are assured of US$110,000, the Tour Championship US$175,000, the top ten after the Tour Championship US$500,000, the top five, US$1 million.

The winner wins a massive US$10,000,000 in addition to any prizemoney received from the earlier events.

With a difference of just 15,300 reset points between the current leader of the FedEx Cup points series, Phil Mickelson, and the last placed, Lee Janzen, it is conceivable that anyone who has made it to this field could still win could still win the US$10 million.

Fourteen Australians have played their way into the event, the most of any country outside of the US. South Africa and Sweden are next best with just five players each in the field.

Phil Mickelson starts as favourite as a result of his position in the game but the very much inform Padraig Harrington, Sergio Garcia and Anthony Kim will no doubt have claims to making the perfect start. Mickelson has done well enough in his recent events for him to be justified as the favourite.

Garcia and Harrington produced a brilliant finish to the PGA Championship and are both previous winners of this event, albeit at a different venue. Anthony Kim has won twice this season on high quality golf courses and gave further indication of his class and potential by finishing 7th on debut at the recent Open Championship.

Camilo Villegas appears on the verge of stepping up to another level on the PGA Tour, his recent 4th place at the PGA offering very good evidence of that. He has yet to win a PGA Tour event but this might offer a good chance.

Andres Romero appears likely to win a very big event before long and a recent good week at Oakland Hills was another example of how good a player he is in his rookie season on the PGA Tour.

The Australians are certainly well represented numerically but only Geoff Ogilvy and Adam Scott have won on the PGA Tour this season and given current form it would surprise if they were to do so again.

Aaron Baddeley appears to be getting close to his best while Robert Allenby, Stuart Appleby, Rod Pampling, Jason Day, Steve Elkington, Mathew Goggin, Nathan Green Matt Jones, Peter Lonard, Nick O’Hern and New Zealander Tim Wilkinson all get their chance to turn a good year into something much better.