The first sentence of Henry David Thoreau's On Walden Pond is, "Simplify, simplify." Maybe Tim Finchem and the Big Tour Thinkers should head out to the pond from TPC Boston. (You could get directions on Google  maps, or go Thoreau-style, on foot.) Go there for inspiration and clear thinking. Because the fact is, the whole FedEx point system, it's not even close to working. It's way off. It's way to complicated.

The goal of the playoff system is to get more name players playing more PGA Tour events after the final major of the year, the PGA Championship. More stars means more TV viewers and paying spectators, and it's good for everybody, including rank-and-file Tour players, to whom Finchem must always pay close attention. (They hire and fire him, indirectly.) Worthy goals, I suppose.

Maybe you've seen the Tour's TV spot for the FedEx Cup playoffs with Joe Torre, the manager whose professional life has been defined by October playoff baseball. The Tour wants you to think golf playoffs are like baseball playoffs. Or basketball playoffs. Or any sport with a real playoff season.

But in any other sport, you play all season to get in the playoffs and then you basically start all over again. You earn your salary during the regular season. You earn glory in the post-season. But in golf, the players earn money and glory in its well-established, April-August High Season. After that, it's funny money. And even now with the FedEx play, it's still funny money. So the question becomes, how do you get Tiger and Phil serious about funny money, and how do you get the public to care?

I propose this and I'm sure it would need a boatload of tweaking:

You play all year, through the PGA Championship, to establish a list of 144 FedEx Qualifiers. Do it straight off the money list; forget the point system. In week one, top 72 make the cut. The bottom 72 are out for the whole four weeks. Next week 72 play; top 36 make the cut. The rest are out for the remaining two weeks. In weeks three and four, 36 play both times. Four 72-hole stroke play events, with a $1 million to the winner each week. The winner of the hole is the low man for all 288 holes.

You want to win, you have to play the whole thing. You want to keep going, you have to make cuts.  You want to watch guys puking their guts out, all you have to do is put on your TV.

Keep it simple and fun. You're not doing some grand thing here -- golf has enough of that already.

If you came to EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 release party in Manhattan on Wednesday and were hoping to catch a glimpse of the “World No. 1,” you had to make sure you didn’t use the restroom, or even blink, because you would’ve missed him.

EA Sports invited me and a couple other Golf Magazine editors to the bash, which took place at Strata, a Flatiron district nightclub known for its purple lighting and all-night weekend parties. For EA Sports, the bar added a dozen or so TV monitors for partygoers to play with the new Tiger Woods game. When I checked in, I asked a rep for EA if Tiger was going to speak.

“Oh, no,” was the reply. “He’s doing Conan O’Brien’s show now. He’s going to walk through here and then go into a private room.”

We decided to camp out by the roped-off VIP area, which happened to be near the bar, to hold our Tiger vigil. This was at about 6 p.m. The bar filled up pretty quickly — free drinks will do that — although the celebrity draw was decidedly low-voltage. We expected Friends of Tiger like Matt Lauer and Derek Jeter, but they had pressing engagements in Denver and the Bronx. So instead we got TV actor Timothy Busfield from thirtysomething — which premiered when Tiger was 7 — and rapper Fabolous. Not that we saw those guys, or Knicks guard Chris Duhon or Harold and Kumar hottie Paula Garces, who were also slated to attend.

We had a running bet of $5 for the first true celebrity sighting. (Rules: All three people had to recognize and have heard of the celebrity.) My plan was to be the first to spot Steve Shrippa from The Sopranos or Andre Iguodala from the 76ers, the fat guy or the tall guy, but the money went unclaimed. Clearly, the VIP area near us was more of a NVIP area for “not very important people.” It’s good to know where you stand in the pecking order.

After two hours of waiting for Tiger — no flashbulbs, no murmur in the crowd, nothing — I left to have dinner with my girlfriend. On the way out I asked the bouncer, “Did Tiger ever show up?”

“Yeah, he came through pretty quickly,” he replied.

People.com reported that Tiger did chat with Michael Phelps (photos) in an upstairs suite but stayed away from the ground floor. Heck, Tiger could have had the Dalai Lama and George W. Bush in that suite, and no one would have known. I guess when the most famous athlete in the world wants to be alone, he goes to one of his own parties.

Tiger Woods, who's in town to promote his new video game, EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, made an appearance at Yankee Stadium Tuesday night right behind home plate as the Bronx Bombers faced the rival the Boston Red Sox. 

The Yankees didn't quite play up to Tiger's standards, losing 7-3, and the world's No. 1 golfer limped out of the stadium during the eighth inning to a round of applause from the surrounding fans. It was one of the few chances Yankee fans had to cheer.

I wouldn't be surprised if he also stopped by to watch his pal Roger Federer, who is in town for the U.S. Open. Maybe he'll run into his good friend Sergio Garcia, who was on the courts yesterday with fellow Spaniard Rafael Nadal. Perhaps they can arrange a friendly game of doubles?

NORTON, Mass. -- 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.

According to Kevin Sutherland, who was hitting balls on the range Tuesday after losing a three-man playoff with Sergio Garcia and Vijay Singh at the Barclays, the two-time U.S. Open champion Janzen was making light of his situation. He was apparently convinced that by doing just enough to get to 70th in FedEx points after this week (the top 70 make the BMW the next week in St. Louis) and then doing just enough there to move to 30th (top 30 make the Tour Championship), he could get all the way to the Tour's ultimate event while remaining outside the top 125 on the money list.

Even if that math is right, which seems far-fetched, Rule 2-2 states that any player who ends the playoffs in the top 30 on the FedEx Cup points list shall keep his card the following year.

In other words, the Tour just saved Janzen from doing a whole lot of unnecessary calculation.   

First he walked on water. Now Tiger Woods performs another amazing feat: He solves Rubik’s Cube in the latest web promo for EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 video game. Check it out here.

Woods, who was 4-years-old in 1980 when the Rubik’s Cube fad first hit the U.S., solves the puzzle and continues to actually putt the cube in the hole from what looks to be about 15 feet . Last week, EA Sports launched its first “viral” web commercial for the game on YouTube. In that clip, Tiger responded to a “glitch” in the game posted on YouTube that allowed video players to make a “Jesus shot,” where video Tiger walks on water to hit a shot from a hazard. In the EA response, the real Tiger walks across a pond to hit a ball resting on a lily pad.

The Rubik’s Cube video was filmed the same day. According to the Motion Theory production company, Tiger and the director Mathew Cullen didn't have much time to film the video, called “Square Peg, Round Hole." On Tiger's first attempt, the cube smashed into pieces. On just the second try, Tiger drains it and yells, “Solved!” It's easy to understand why he's so stoked. The putt actually breaks a little and the cube’s size — more than two inches across — means Tiger doesn’t have much breathing room to fit the cube in the four-and-a-quarter-inch diameter hole.

By withdrawing from this week's European Tour event, the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles, Ian Poulter can no longer earn an automatic spot on the European Ryder Cup team. If the Englishman, who is known for his flamboyant clothes and emotional play, is going to compete at Valhalla, it will now have to be as a captain's pick.

Had Poulter decided to play at Gleneagles, as he originally intended, he might have garnered enough European Ryder Cup points to make the team. But Poulter has played in only 14 PGA Tour events this season. To maintain his PGA Tour card and full playing privileges in the United States, he has to play in 15 events this season. In the end, he was forced to make a difficult decision — play in Europe and possibly qualify for the Ryder Cup or compete in the United States and keep his U.S. PGA Tour card for 2009.

"It has been an extremely difficult decision to take given my burning desire to represent Europe again in defending the Ryder Cup in the United States," he said on the European Tour's Web site. Poulter was on the 2004 team that won at Oakland Hills.

He continued by saying, "I have called Nick Faldo and told him of my decision, and hope that my performance so far this year will earn one of his two wild card picks."

The top five players on the European Tour's Ryder Cup World Points list, along with the top five players on the European Points list who have not already qualified, are all given a place on the team. Poulter, who was the runner-up at this year's British Open, is currently 11th on the European points list and seventh on the world list.

With only one week remaining to earn points, here are the 10 players who would currently earn automatic selection to the European team:

1.    Padraig Harrington
2.    Sergio Garcia
3.    Lee Westwood
4.    Henrik Stenson
5.    Robert Karlsson
6.    Miguel Angel Jimenez
7.    Graeme McDowell
8.    Justin Rose
9.    Soren Hansen
10.  Oliver Willis Wilson

Other players looking to impress Faldo and earn a captain's pick include Paul Casey, Darren Clarke, Martin Kaymer, Carl Petterson and Colin Montgomerie.

(Photo by John Biever/SI)

In case you were thinking Sergio Garcia was sitting around a hotel room someplace, pouting over his recent sudden-death playoff loss to Vijay Singh at the Barclays, think again.

He was hard at work Tuesday morning hitting balls in New York City. Only this time, they were tennis balls, and the opponent was fellow Spaniard Rafael Nadal. Garcia, racket in hand and hat on backwards, exchanged shots with Nadal and observed Nadal's workout on Practice Court 1 at Flushing Meadows, site of that other U.S. Open.

Garcia has long been a tennis lover, and in his younger days even dated Swiss tennis star Martina Hingis.

According to Michael Barkann of the USA network, Nadal is an 11-handicap golfer who plays every day when he is home.

Now let's think about this for a minute....

After about three years of living in the shadow of Roger Federer — arguably the best tennis player ever — Nadal has become the world's No. 1 after winning his fourth-consecutive French Open and first Wimbledon title.

This season, Sergio won the Players and nearly won the PGA Championship. In both events, as well as last week at the Barclays, Garcia showed more poise, determination and grit than we had come to expect from him. He seemed to take the good bounces and the bad in stride. Those are all qualities that Nadal exudes. Coincidence?

If Sergio is going to make a serious run at Tiger Woods, and finally lose the title of Best Player to Have Never Won a Major, he could learn a lot from Nadal.  Who knows — maybe he already has.

(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

One of the major differences between this year's Ryder Cup and those contested in 2004 and 2006 is that Europe will be the prohibitive favorite. Not only will Tiger Woods not be playing for the U.S., but the European team is also stacked with both experienced stars and golfers who seem to be peaking at just the right time. Padraig Harrington, Sergio Garcia, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Lee Westwood, Paul Casey and Henrik Stenson are going to make the visiting team tough to beat.

In some ways they remind me of last season's New England Patriots. The Pats seemed invincible, and after going undefeated in the regular season they rolled into the Super Bowl with talk of destiny ringing in their ears.

So maybe it's a good omen that Ben Curtis, one of the eight players who has already qualified for the U.S. Ryder Cup team, wore a New York Giants logo on his chest Sunday at the Barclays. Curtis turned in yet another stellar performance and tied for fourth. Only a loose approach shot on the 16th hole, which eventually led to his only bogey of the day, kept Curtis out of the playoff with Garcia, Kevin Sutherland and the eventual winner, Vijay Singh.

Aside from Justin Leonard's tie for seventh, Curtis provided Paul Azinger with the lone bright light at the Barclays. After taking the lead on Friday, Steve Stricker's 77 on Saturday did not bode well for how he might handle Ryder Cup pressure. And after shooting 62 in the opening round, Hunter Mahan's 73-74-73 finish was not encouraging either. Phil Mickelson was never a factor, and Stewart Cink missed the cut.

Curtis has quietly been very impressive on some of golf's biggest stages this season. He was the runner-up to Anthony Kim at Wachovia, tied for seventh at the British Open and tied for second at the PGA Championship.

John Huggins, while lamenting the fact that Colin Montgomerie will clearly not be on the European Ryder Cup team, recently wrote in the Scotsman:

We [Scotland] are devoid of golfers good enough to take on an American side that looks mediocre at best.

No one thought that Eli Manning was going to avoid the sack and complete that pass to David Tyree. The Giants shocked us all and beat the mighty Patriots, so who's to say that, with Curtis's help, the Americans can't get it done, too?

(Photo by Hunter Martin/Getty Images)

Each year during the FBR Open, which is played at the TPC Scottsdale, television announcers make a big deal out of the Valley Effect.

The idea is that all putts break away from Pinnacle Peak and toward the city of Phoenix, which sits in a valley several miles away. Putts that look like they should roll straight actually have a subtle break.

Kenny Perry thinks that there is a similar effect at Ridgewood. "I have the secret out here, and if I tell you, everyone is going to know," he said earlier this week.

Nonetheless, Perry went on to explain what he's learned. "You know the ridge that runs through the middle of the golf course? It's true, everything breaks away from the ridge to matter where you are."

According to Perry, his caddie spoke with some locals around the club and got the information. "If you understand the Ridge Effect, you can get a feel for the speed of the greens. Knowing that, it may not look downhill if you're going away from that ridge, but it's going to be a fast putt no matter what."

Unfortunately for Perry, his local knowledge did not pay big dividends on Thursday — he needed 30 putts to complete his round.

(Photo by Chris Condon/Getty Images)

Nick Faldo must have been all smiles today at lunch.

Paul Casey, competing this week in the Barclays at Ridgewood Country Club, was safely in the clubhouse after shooting an opening-round 65. The Englishman needs to play well over the next two weeks to earn spot on Faldo's Ryder Cup team.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, Justin Rose, who is also on the bubble to make the Ryder Cup team, shot 67 to finish the first day of the KLM Open tied for fifth. Darren Clarke, who is trying to impress Faldo and earn a captain's pick, shot 68.

Don't look now, but the European stars that Faldo wants on his squad are starting to get hot. 

Padraig Harrington has won two majors in two months, and Sergio Garcia is playing well again. Lee Westwood and Miguel Angel Jimenez may have missed the cut at the PGA Championship, but you know both will be ready to go at Valhalla. If Casey, Clarke and Rose continue to round into form, Faldo will be grinning from ear to ear.

(Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)