As we now have officially opened the 2007 Professional Golf season, I have had several golfers say that they don’t really understand how the new FedEx Cup competition on the Men’s Professional Golf Tour will work. So here is my current understanding (please remember, I am a Golf Nut, so believe at your own risk).

There will be 36 weeks of points accumulation for the golfers. Each tournament will have a certain number of points that the golfers will accumulate in addition to prize money. Most of your PGA Tour events will have 25,000 points. The tournament winner will get 4,500, second place is worth 2,700, and so on down to 50 points for 70th place. Major Championships and the Players Championship will be slightly larger with 27,500 points and the distribution is: 4,950 to first place, 2,970, to second, down to 50 points for 70th.

After 33 weeks of golf, the top 144 golfers in terms of points will start a four week championship play off. All points totals will be reset (just like NASCAR does). The number one golfer at that point will have 100,000 points, number two 99,000, number three 98,500, number four 98,000, and last at spot 144 will have 84,700.

The play off golf tournaments will have 50,000 points each. After week one, only the top 120 golfers advance. After week two, only the top 70 move on. Then after week three, the top 30 golfers at that point will play in the season-ending Tour Championship.

Simple, easy to understand? I don’t know but at this point, the only thing I feel comfortable with is that it will probably change. I am not sure that the pro golfers totally understand it at this point.

Will it make golf more exciting at season end? In my opinion, only if this competition succeeds in getting the top golfer (Tiger, Phil, Vijay, etc) to compete more at the end of the year. They all have a tendency to disappear after the PGA except for certain specific tournaments.

Well golfers, we shall have to wait and see.