Unofficially, the season ended for many fans when Tiger Woods had knee surgery in June, ending his season and sending a lot of casual fans looking for other things to watch.

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Mickelson would undoubtedly help drive up attendances, at least in the short-term, while the likes of JB Holmes and Boo Weekley, two of America ’s heroes from Valhalla , would help add extra interest to the run-of-the-mill Tour event.

It is, of course, no coincidence that some of the top names from the PGA Tour are looking towards Europe just as the Race to Dubai replaces the old Order of Merit.

Instead of players’ winnings counting over the course of the season to the Merit title, instead a Fed-Ex Cup-style conclusion will conclude with the Dubai World Championship next year

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Woods said on his Web site that Elin is expecting in late winter without being more specific on a due date.

He has not played since his U.S. Open victory in June, and two weeks later had reconstructive surgery on his left knee that put him out for the year. Woods’ first child, daughter Sam, was born on Monday after the 2007 U.S. Open.

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Assuming he finishes — i.e., doesn’t have a disqualification (DQ) or withdrawal (WD), or doesn’t play (DNP) — he needs to have a 10,501 point lead over second place to guarantee he’ll win the FedExCup. As of now, his lead over Sergio Garcia in second is 12,225, so the only way Singh can control whether he clinches in St. Louis is to win. Then, even if Garcia finishes second, Singh will have at least a 15,825 point lead and will be the FedExCup champion even if he doesn’t earn any points in THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola.

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The joke on the driving range at TPC Boston on Tuesday concerned the new week-to-week volatility in the FedEx Cup playoffs. Scuttlebutt said that a player could advance all the way to the 30-man Tour Championship and still fail to finish in the top 125 on the money list, thus losing his Tour card.

But is that actually true?

Lee Janzen is the low man on the money list (149th) among those in the field at the Deutsche Bank this week. He barely made it into the field at last week’s Barclays, the first stop in the four-week playoff series, and then made the cut to get to 119th in FedEx Cup points. Again, that was barely enough to make it into the 120-man field at the Deutsche Bank, which starts Friday.

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The LPGA boasts players from all over the world, and it wants all of them to be able to speak English.
 
The LPGA will require players to speak English starting in 2009, with players who have been LPGA members for two years facing suspension if they can’t pass an oral evaluation of English skills. The rule is effective immediately for new players.
 
“Why now? Athletes now have more responsibilities and we want to help their professional development,” deputy commissioner Libba Galloway told The Associated Press. “There are more fans, more media and more sponsors. We want to help our athletes as best we can succeed off the golf course as well as on it.”
 
The tour held a mandatory meeting with South Koreans last Wednesday at the Safeway Classic to inform them of the new policy, which was first reported by Golfweek magazine. There is no such rule on the PGA TOUR.

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Michelle Wie, using the last of her six LPGA Tour exemptions this year, tied for 12th at 3 under. She had rounds of 75, 70, 69 and 71.

The 18-year-old Stanford student had to finish first or second to guarantee a spot on the 2009 LPGA Tour. Having fallen short, she said she hasn’t decided whether to go to Q-School in a bid to earn an LPGA Tour card.

“I feel like I gained a lot of confidence in myself again this year,” Wie said. “Being pain-free in the later part of the year, I started feeling confident. From May on, it’s getting better and better and now in the offseason, I know what to work on for next year.”

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Rose’s failure to make certain of a place in the Nick Faldo’s side has brought him back from America, where he had been planning to play the first leg of the FedExCup playoff series with its $7 million jackpot.

“It’s a frustrating situation,” he admitted. “I don’t know whether I have done enough yet to get into the team. I hope so, but I might not have.”

Last season’s European Tour No. 1 is about $90,000 ahead of Wilson, who in turn is about $5,000 ahead of Dane Soren Hansen in the 10th and last automatic spot. The closest gap, though, is between Hansen and 11th-placed Martin Kaymer. Just about $500 separates them.

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Someone is going to win the golf tournament this week, and that will carry with it a range of important benefits, including a significant jump in the FedExCup standings, invitations to a number of big events next year and, of course, a sizeable check. However, the most interesting competition this week may be elsewhere on the leaderboard, as players work to make the most of their last chance to get into the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup.

• A 23rd-place finish for Davis Love III feels well within reach, but his only “top 23″ so far this year is T19 at the British Open.

• Another player worth watching is Will Mackenzie, currently 156th in the standings, needing a top-15 finish to make it into The Barclays. He has been injured much of the year, but showed signs at the John Deere Classic (where he finished T4) of returning to the form he showed early in 2007. If he’s healthy, he could make an interesting late season run.

Players to watch this week who could make big moves closer to the top of the FedExCup standings are:

• Vijay Singh (7th) — The highest ranked player in the field, Singh could take over third with a victory, and is only 145 points out of the top five (33rd place or better). If he can cure his putting woes, Singh is a significant threat in this tournament and throughout the Playoffs.

• Ryuji Imada (10th) — Imada has been a classic example of “feast or famine” this year, with a win, two seconds and a fifth to his credit, alongside seven missed cuts, including his last three starts. If he’s around for the weekend, he could contend for the victory.

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In six starts, Woods won four times, finished in the top 10 in the other two, and capped it off with that awe-inspiring playoff triumph on wounded knee at the U.S. Open.

To deprive Woods — who has won three consecutive Player of the Year awards and nine in his career — somebody had to do something special.

Enter Padraig Harrington.

Never has a golfer won two majors and not been rewarded as Player of the Year by a vote of the membership. Simply put, two majors trumps anything else that has happened this year, including Tiger’s accomplishments before his season was shortened due to injury.

Not only will Harrington’s back-to-back major victories at the Open Championship and PGA Championship be remembered at voting time, so will the way he finished the rain-soaked tournament at Oakland Hills — a pair of 66s that he posted on Sunday, a spectacular display of golf on a course that left so many of his colleagues gasping for air.

There is precedent for Harrington outdistancing Woods when the TOUR members cast their ballots.

In 1998, David Duval led the TOUR with four victories (no majors). He topped the money list with $2,591,031. In addition, he led the Presidents Cup team eligibility list and won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average (69.13).

By any measure, it was a season worthy of Player of the Year.

Meanwhile, Mark O’Meara won just twice that year — but both came in majors, the Masters and the Open Championship. Those two major victories put O’Meara over the top in the Player of the Year voting. Duval finished a close second.

The same thing should happen this year. Harrington deserves to win Player of the Year. He’s currently fourth on the money list and has four other top five finishes besides his two majors, all impressive stuff. If he wins the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, or even just one of the four Playoff events, he’ll should seal the deal.

But even if he doesn’t, those two major victories will be enough for him to join O’Meara and Vijay Singh (2004) as the only players to win Player of the Year in the Tiger Era.

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