Tour Insider: FedExCup debut, look out for Appleby  PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent KAPALUA, Hawaii -- If there is a new era in golf, then the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship, the epitome of golfing spoils, is sure to be scrutinized thoroughly this week by the game's cognoscenti. This week's lid lifter might well offer a glimpse of the higher octave of intensity that could permeate the 2007 PGA TOUR campaign and the new competitive format, the FedExCup. The limited-field event reserved for winners of PGA TOUR tournaments in the '06 season -- the old era in golf -- commences Thursday at the unique and unpretentious Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort in Maui. Thirty-four men are in attendance for a week that constitutes the ultimate in reward bonuses. Tropical breezes spiced with ocean air, sedentary pursuits drenched in sand and sun, posh accommodations, and guaranteed money to go along with a January tan. It's a wonder anyone can concentrate on golf, but that is what the lucky 34 must do with a bit more resolve, what with the fact that the PGA TOUR season has a points race and has been cut back to 40 events, with the first 36 determining who makes the relatively non-exclusive 144-man field for the start of the four-tournament playoff run. There might not be more pressure in '07, but each event in a shortened season should bring more urgency.  (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
The TOUR Insider certainly feels the urgency to keep readers acquainted with things worth knowing. That's how he scores his points. Remember, it's all about the points now. Worth knowing: • There was little mystery to Stuart Appleby's relatively high winning score of 8 under par in 2006 after he blitzed the Plantation Course for 21 under and 22 under the previous two years. The confounding Kona winds were one reason. A larger factor was the firmness of the renovated greens. They've softened considerably with a year's aging, and with a forecast for little rain and mild and complementary trade winds, course superintendent Craig Trenholme predicts that the winning score may be 8 to 10 shots lower. "We know that given the right winter conditions, the course can play fairly easy," Trenholme, in his sixth year at Kapalua, said. "The course is in great shape. These guys should eat it up." Green speeds will be topped off at about 11 on the stimpmeter, Trenholme said. The rough is a mere 3-3½ inches. • There are 25,000 points available this week in the FedExCup competition, including 4,950 going to the winner, who also gets, by the way, $1.1 million out of the $5.5 million purse and a new Mercedes-Benz GL450. • Stuart Appleby attempts to join Tiger Woods as the second player of the modern era to win the same tournament four straight years. Woods made his quad at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club in Orlando from 2000-03. • Vijay Singh, runner-up to Appleby in '06 and '04, has never won the Mercedes-Benz Championship, but he hold the distinction of the most top-10 finishes with seven, one more than Woods. • Former U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk arrived at the Mercedes-Benz Championship last year with a new equipment deal with Srixon. He finished third, which was a harbinger of good things to come and validated the switch. Furyk, the last American winner of the Mercedes (2001), went on to win twice in '06 and moved up to No. 2 in the world rankings with nine top-3 finishes. • Adam Scott could secure a unique double. He comes in as the reigning champion of the '06 TOUR Championship and vies to become only the second man to make the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship his second consecutive victory, joining the absent Tiger Woods, who secured the double in 2000. • Davis Love III, the '93 champ, makes his 11th appearance in this event, but only his fourth at Kapalua Resort. That paucity of Hawaii visits is all the more poignant given that he twice won on the Plantation Course in the Lincoln-Mercury Kapalua International, a Challenge Season event until the Mercedes-Benz Championship moved to Maui in '99. • First-time competitors at the Plantation Course in the Mercedes-Benz Championship number 15, nearly half the field. That includes 13 first-time winners last year and veteran Corey Pavin, whose victory in Milwaukee was his first in 10 years. Three first-time participants finished in the top 10 last year and only one finished as high in 2005. Sergio Garcia is the only debutante to win, taking the '02 title. |
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