ESPN Golf

Goodbye, regular season! Hello, playoffs!

In case you've spent the past year with your head in a bunker or searching for long-lost balatas west of a fairway, the PGA Tour is taking things to the limit this year, with a four-tournament postseason as part of its FedEx Cup series.

Then again, unless you've been intently watching golf telecasts in recent weeks -- or just clicking over during commercials, seemingly half of which are promoting the new format -- it's hard to find much buzz for the upcoming tournaments. For their part, most players have taken a wait-and-see approach to the playoffs, but the waiting game ends this week, putting the tour's best in a show-me state.

Among the few who won't be showing anything off this week is Tiger Woods, who is skipping the first of four events. The Weekly 18 begins with the notion that without Tiger, the FedEx playoffs are going to sound a whole lot different.

Call it the PGA Tour's Big Bang Theory. After so many years of a schedule that ended with a thud, the tour implemented the FedEx Cup prior to this season, culminating in a four-event playoff series that gives professional golf a major boost heading into a time of year dominated by football and baseball on the sports landscape.

Well, the season may now end with a bang, but with Woods' announcement that he'll skip the first tournament of the playoff series, The Barclays, that bang will begin with -- you guessed it -- a thud.

"I'm just not ready. … My body is spent and I need a short break," Woods said via statement on Friday. "This is in no way a knock on Barclays, their new event next week or the new FedEx Cup series, which I fully support. I just hope that this extra week of rest will rejuvenate me for the final three playoff events and Presidents Cup. It is still my goal to win the FedEx Cup and I am hopeful this will give me the best opportunity to finish the year strong."

Now that's what you call putting some extra spin on an approach.

Of course, one measured statement deserves another and Woods' claim was volleyed right back by tour commissioner Tim Finchem on Sunday.

"He feels it's his best chance to win the thing by taking a week off after the wins at Bridgestone and the PGA," Finchem said during CBS's broadcast of the Wyndham. "I'm very disappointed about that decision. On the other hand, I can't second-guess Tiger in terms of what he thinks he needs to do to win and he is committed to win, as we've seen all year long."

There's no doubt that Woods' decision to skip The Barclays was met with pure disdain at Ponte Vedra Beach headquarters. PGA Tour events can be divided into two distinct categories: Those With Woods and Those Without. Certainly the powers-that-be didn't envision a start to the inaugural playoffs that failed to include their main attraction, but in eschewing the tournament Woods has cast his vote on where his allegiance to the new playoff series remains.

Woods will be at home when the festivities begin this Thursday. And that sound you hear? It will be a thud, not a bang.

So what do you, Mr. and Mrs. PGA Tour Fan, think of the new playoff series? Well, it's tough to tell. As of this writing, an ESPN.com poll question which asked, "Are you excited about the upcoming FedEx playoffs?" had received 3,384 votes. Fifty percent said yes. Fifty percent said no. Glad we got that all cleared up.

Speaking of ESPN.com poll questions, another query earlier this week hardly received as much of a mixed message. There were 9,638 respondents for the question, "Will Tiger Woods break Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors?" with 97.4 percent voting "yes" and 2.6 percent saying "no." What does that tell us? Well, exactly 251 readers are in serious denial.

Based on Woods' recent PGA Championship victory, it's now a matter of when, rather than if. As in, When will Tiger break Jack's record of 18 career majors? It was a popular query during the past week, one which has many experts racking their brains. There are the optimists, who believe Woods' recent major win will fuel another historic run that could see the record fall as soon as 2009. There are the sentimentalists, who are hoping Woods will jaunt across Swilcan Bridge en route to No. 19 when the British Open comes to St. Andrews in 2010. And there are the analysts, who examine recent history and say it won't happen until 2011 or '12. Consider us among the latter category. Throughout the peaks and valleys of Woods' major professional career, he's now made 44 appearances and won 13 times. That's a rate of 29.5 percent -- meaning Woods wins three out of every 10 majors in which he plays. Considering he needs six more victories to break the record, it doesn't take a statistician to figure that, if he continues to win at that pace, it will take 20 more majors. What does it all mean? Might want to book a flight to Kiawah Island, where the famed Ocean Course will play host to the 2012 PGA Championship.

Woods isn't the only player who's eligible for The Barclays but is skipping the event. Among the others who won't make the trip to Westchester are Jason Bohn (rib injury), Stephen Ames (back), Ryan Palmer (personal reasons) and Bernhard Langer (playing in a Euro Tour event).

The race for the PGA Tour's rookie of the year award may be over. Unless a first-year player like Anthony Kim, Henrik Stenson or Jeff Quinney can nab a title at one of the four playoff events, Brandt Snedeker's victory in Greensboro should clinch the award for the 27-year-old Nationwide Tour grad. In 25 starts this season, he's missed the cut only five times, while recording six top-10s and earning $2,581,810.

If that season total sounds like a lot, well, it should. In exactly one season on tour, Snedeker has earned just $10,140 less than 2007 Hall of Fame inductee Hubert Green earned … for his entire career. In fact, add in some cash Snedeker had already won in previous years as a nonmember and he's already well ahead of Green on the PGA Tour's list of greenbacks earned, rising from 311th to 249th on the career list with his win in Greensboro.

The big winners in the last event of the regular season? (Other than the actual winner, Snedeker, of course.) Shigeki Maruyama, Jeff Overton and Anders Hansen each jumped into the top 144 on the points list to gain entry into at least one playoff event. Meanwhile, Tim Petrovic's T-2 finish vaulted him from 124th to 82nd, ensuring that he'll be eligible for at least the next two tournaments. Any player in 86th place or better is assured of competing in the Deutsche Bank Championship.

The highest-ranked player in the Wyndham Championship field? That would be North Carolina resident Carl Pettersson, who was 48th in the world entering the tournament. True to form, the "Swedish Redneck" contended for much of the week, only to be undone by playing the final four holes 1-over on Sunday afternoon, resulting in a fifth-place finish, tying his best result of the season.

Coming off a T-30 finish at the PGA Championship that lifted him into 166th on the FedEx points list, John Daly appeared on the verge of making the playoffs with a good week … except for one little fact. Rather than competing in Greensboro, Daly took an appearance fee to compete in the Scandinavian Masters, where he shot 72-75 to miss the cut by four strokes.

This week's biggest tale of heartbreak and woe? It's that of Martin Kaymer, the 22-year-old German who led the Scandinavian Masters for much of the final round, only to finish bogey-par-double to lose by two strokes to Mikko Ilonen. "I tried to stick to my game plan, but it didn't work out," Kaymer said. "But this is another tournament where I think I have learned a lot about myself."

Lorena Ochoa's victory at the Canadian Women's Open gave the No. 1-ranked player wins in three different countries this year -- the U.S., Scotland and Canada. Ironically enough, she's won in every nation where there's been an LPGA event in 2007, except her native Mexico, where she finished T-2 and T-6 in two events.

Just how dominant has Ochoa been this season? Let's look at the numbers. Her five victories are three more than Suzann Pettersen, the only other player with multiple wins. Her earnings of $2.6 million-plus are well more than double that of Pettersen. And she averages nearly one more birdie per round than anyone else. That, golf fans, is called domination.

Michelle Wie played the Canadian Women's Open this past week and though her game hardly looked improved -- she shot 75-74 to miss the cut by four strokes -- it seemed like a wiser, more mature Wie who met with the media on Tuesday. "Looking back at it now, there's a lot of moments in my life that I want to redo," Wie said. "But that's in the past. It's not going to … have a second chance at it." In particular, Wie addressed instructor David Leadbetter's comments that she returned too soon from recent wrist injuries, failing to give them enough time to heal. "I'm not going to break my wrist again and do it over the right way. So I might as well move forward, forget about the past and believe in myself 100 percent, whether or not I'm doing the right thing ," she said. It signified a rare admission of possible wrongdoing on the part of Wie -- and the folks around her -- which could be a step in the right direction.

Hey, there's never a bad occasion to win your third Nationwide Tour event of the season and become the eighth player in history to claim an in-season promotion, but it's not exactly perfect timing for Nick Flanagan. The 23-year-old Aussie took the Xerox Classic by one stroke on Sunday to earn his third win of the year, but he'll have to wait over a month if he wants to exercise his newfound status, as the title won't get Flanagan into any of the PGA Tour's playoff events. Not that any of that mattered to him after the win. "Making it to the PGA Tour is a dream come true," said the former U.S. Amateur champ. "A lot of things went right for me [Sunday]."

OK, since you asked: The other seven players to receive in-season promotions from the Nationwide to the PGA Tour are Jason Gore (2005), Tom Carter (2003), Patrick Moore (2002), Pat Bates (2001), Chad Campbell (2001), Heath Slocum (2001) and Chris Smith (1997).

It wasn't quite the 2004 Masters -- in which he finished T-13 as an amateur -- but Casey Wittenberg's victory in the Hooters Tour's Flora Bama Lounge Classic signified a possible return to prominence for the one-time wunderkind. Wittenberg led wire to wire, shooting 65-66-69-71 for his second career win on the minor league circuit. Just 22 (he turns 23 in November) it's still way too early to call the Memphis, Tenn., native a flash in the pan. Expect him to reach the big leagues -- and make an impact -- soon enough, perhaps as early as next year.

A new TV promo for the FedEx Cup shows former NFL quarterback Phil Simms advising Ernie Els to throw on some eye black. "It's not going to do anything," the current CBS analyst tells him, "but it makes you look meaner." It's an innocuous comment in an otherwise too-cute spot for the upcoming playoffs, but it brings up an intriguing question: Why don't golfers wear eye black? The reason other outdoor competitors -- football and baseball players, most notably -- place those familiar lines under their eyes is to reduce glare from the sun and other lights. Couldn't this light reduction also work in golf, where a simple flicker off a club shaft or an ill-timed camera flash can cause so much damage? And perhaps eye black can reduce stress on players who spend much of an afternoon staring into the heavens, trying to maintain sight on their golf ball. It's an interesting notion and yet, the Weekly 18 staff can't recall any pros who have taken to using eye black. If nothing else, like Simms said, it'll make 'em look meaner.

Jason Sobel is ESPN.com's golf editor. He can be reached at Jason.Sobel@espn3.com