"I think there's a lot of areas that could be improved in the FedEx Cup," Mickelson said with his familiar grin, "and the naming of it would be one of the last ones that would make a big difference."
That produced laughter from the reporters on the scene, because they knew Mickelson has been displeased with far more critical issues in the Cup, and that there has been spirited debate among many for a month about nearly every permutation in the first-ever attempt at golf "playoffs."
So the heck with semantics. The Cup should be judged by what occurred on the golf course this past month, and most of it was nothing short of spectacular.
It began with Steve Stricker's emotional win, followed by the scintillating showdown between Mickelson and Tiger Woods. Then Woods tosses up a 63 on Sunday in Week 3 to win, and he follows that up by notching his lowest 72-hole score ever Sunday to take the Tour Championship by eight shots and clinch the $10 million annuity as the FedEx Cup champ.
For the quality of the golf, there wasn't a better monthlong stretch during the season. Welcome to Commissioner Tim Finchem's wildest dream.
"This is a big success this year, and a huge step for the future," Finchem said even before a shot had been played last week in Atlanta. "We've just got to look to the future and see what we are faced with, and then make some adjustments."
Despite all of the concerns and criticisms of the Cup - including those voiced strongly from this corner - it did the one thing the tour set out to do: Get people talking about and watching golf well into September. Golf fans didn't yawn, that's for sure.
In fact, the controversies over the format, as well as Mickelson and Woods deciding to skip one tournament each, only seemed to produce more water-cooler talk.
"We like a lot of the controversy that has surrounded elements of the system," Finchem said. "We like it because it gets people talking about the Cup; it gets people interested in the Cup and its fun."
The television ratings weren't too shabby either, as long as Woods was involved - which is the case all the time. The Sunday ratings for Week 3, even while going up nationally against the Chargers-Bears game, were better than anything the tour or Ryder Cup had ever produced against the NFL. And the overnight ratings for Woods' win Sunday were up 200 percent from last year's Tour Championship played in November, when Woods didn't compete and Adam Scott won.
Still, Finchem has acknowledged that some of the criticism from media, fans, and players has been on point, and we can expect some significant tweaking as early as next year.
Even Finchem's most off-the-cuff comments seem like they've been prepared by a Bush speech writer, but reading between the lines of his State of the Tour address, there were some hints at these changes:
- While the television networks did a nice job of tracking players in the points standings, the system was still too convoluted for any but the most devoted fan to follow week to week. There also was very little drama in the rise or fall of players. Only three golfers outside the top 30 at the playoffs' outset managed to get into the Tour Championship.
"We didn't have guys who were well outside play one good tournament, and boom, they're in," Woods said.
Too much volatility would hurt the legitimacy of the season-long race, but it'd be a lot more interesting if more than five players had a chance to win the whole thing come the final week.
- The schedule was a big point of contention, and though the general sports fan may have winced at the players' perceived whining at being overworked, tournament golf is a seven-day work week, including corporate outing and practice, and Mickelson, for example, played 10 of 13 weeks.
Bottom line is Finchem never prefers Woods to be on the sidelines, and so expect to see some breaks between playoff weeks when the tour can swing it on the schedule.
- Some fans and players have cried loudly that it should be mandatory to play all four to win the Cup, but that edict isn't going to come down.
"Candidly, I don't think it's hurt the Cup that much," Finchem said of the high-profile absences at different junctures by Woods, Mickelson, Ernie Els, and Padraig Harrington.
"The flow of the schedule is so much different now than it used to be," Finchem said. "So I think we have to be sensitive to that."
If they ask the players to go four straight again, expect Woods and Mickelson to take their well-earned byes again.
- Woods was right on when he said the initial fields - 144 players in the opener and 120 in Week 2 - are too big.
"I think that was a mistake," Woods said. "I think that if you have smaller fields, guys play all year, and you try and narrow it down to a smaller field, I think that will give us the prestige that they're trying to achieve."
Good luck trying to convince the journeyman on that.
- The $10 million annuity Woods won as the FedEx champion could triple by the time he retires. A nice nest egg, but he, Mickelson and other players have loudly voiced their desire to see more up-front cash. They say it would excite fans more, but I think it's the least critical puzzle to the Cup. The fans care far less about the money than the players.
You can bet, though, a larger split goes toward immediate payouts next year.
"I think if the emotional nexus to the competition is enhanced by shifting that balance, I suspect we should shift the balance," Finchem said.
APPRECIATING WOODS
A colleague was trying to explain Sunday the rather ho-hum reaction by some to Woods' latest run of incredible play: "It's like Roger Federer. Everybody expects him to win. It doesn't seem like there's anything he hasn't done already."
Well, first Federer has to beat only seven players to win a major. But the greater beauty of golf and Woods is that there are so many numbers, so many records, and Woods keeps besting, even himself, in extraordinary ways. And unlike Federer, he'll be doing it for at least another 20 years.
Just look at last week. With the first FedEx Cup on the line, Woods still managed to make it sweeter and more compelling by posting his personal-best 72-hole score at 23-under and routing the Tour Championship's scoring record by six shots.
Woods blew through 12 FedEx rounds in an incredible 59 under par. After his first playoff round of 72, he shot 64-67-67-67-67-65-63-64-63-64-66. That's a 65.75 average.
He won seven tournaments all season and four of the last five he played.
He concluded his season with an adjusted scoring average of 67.79, which matched exactly his record average of 2000. Ernie Els was No. 2 this year - by 1.50 strokes. And know this about how stunning that is: The players tied for 91st - ninety-first! - on the tour in scoring average, Chris Riley and Bob Estes, trailed Els by 1.50 strokes.
So, these are mere cubs standing at one side of the Grand Canyon, mewing at the Tiger on the other side.
Woods is 21 wins shy of tying Sam Snead's remarkable record of 82 career victories, and at the rate of seven wins per year he could get there before his 34th birthday. There are really no worthy superlatives for that.
Snead was 52 when he won his last title in '65.
