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By Dave Shedloski
PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent

Rookie Brandt Snedeker, the newly minted Wyndham Championship winner, called it a "four-week lottery ticket." He was referring to the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, which offers a $10 million prize at the end of a rainbow that stretches from New York to Boston to Chicago to Atlanta.

But in this lottery, which totals $35 million in all, the players have a say in determining the winning numbers.

Vijay Singh, the only golfer to win The Barclays three times, is the defending champion at Westchester Country Club this week. (Getty Images)

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• Video: Preview Barclays 2007

After 33 weeks and 36 tournaments, the first playoff field in PGA TOUR history is set with 144 players eligible for the upcoming opener, The Barclays, at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y. When 72 holes have been completed on the popular Westchester layout, the top 120 players in the reshuffled points list move on to the Deutsche Bank Championship.

The task is pretty clear: Play well and find a way to move on to the following week.

The playoff contingent will need to have their game in shape to get the numbers they seek. Westchester Country Club might be only 6,839 yards, par 71, but this is a layout with teeth, and they have been made sharper for this year's playoff event. Instead of a lush and soft layout that the players are used to encountering in June, the boys in pleats will instead find a course playing more firm and fast after getting baked in the summer sun. A new irrigation system helps ensure the rough is healthier and more penal -- this on a golf course that was the fifth most difficult a year ago, yielding a scoring average of 73.033.

It might be a new era in golf, but this traditional layout probably won't succumb to the new bomb-and-gouge approach. Anyone who watched FedExCup points leader Tiger Woods dissect Southern Hills Country Club in the PGA Championship should just cut and paste that strategy onto Westchester's green shoulders.

No one quite knows how the next few weeks will pan out, but that is part of the intrigue.

Hey, we're about to experience a new aura in golf, too.

Worth knowing:

Davis Love III underwent a successful a kidney stone procedure Thursday near his home in Georgia and expects to be in this week's Barclays after withdrawing from the Wyndham Championship, where he was the defending champion. Love has played in The Barclays only seven times, and he never has finished better than 14th.

With his victory in 2006, Vijay Singh became the first three-time winner of The Barclays. In addition to Singh, there have been four other multiple winners at The Barclays, and two of them are in the field: Sergio Garcia and Ernie Els. Jack Nicklaus and Seve Ballesteros are the others.

Including Singh in 1993, there have been eight first-time winners at The Barclays, but only Singh and J.P. Hayes, the 1998 champion, are in this week's field. The others: Andy North (1977), Jack Renner (1979), Wayne Grady (1989), Dennis Paulson (2000), Chris Smith (2002) and Jonathan Kaye.

Australia's Steve Elkington, who has enjoyed a resurgence in 2007, has never won The Barclays, but he has made the cut 15 consecutive years and 16 times in 18 starts. The last three winners and nine of the last 15 champs have been non-Americans. Elkington had a runner-up finish in 1996.

Eleven rookies, led by Brandt Snedeker, who is ninth in FedExCup standings after his Wyndham Championship win, have qualified for the playoffs, but some of them have to feel some urgency; six are ranked 121st or lower among the 144-man playoff field. The top 120 advance to next week's Boston stop. The other first-year players in action, in order of their points standing, are: Anthony Kim, Steve Marino, John Mallinger, George McNeill, Doug LaBelle, John Merrick, Johnson Wagner, Ryan Armour, Michael Putnam and Andrew Buckle.

Watch out for a steady guy like Bob Estes this week. Estes, 107th in the FedExCup standings, began the Wyndham Championship with a bogey and then didn't make another one. Estes played the final 71 holes at Forest Oaks Country Club in Greensboro, N.C., with 14 birdies and 57 pars and wound up 13-under par to tie for 26th place.

Nick Flanagan's rally to victory Sunday at the Xerox Classic in Rochester, N.Y., gave him his third victory this year on the Nationwide Tour, and, thus, earned him a promotion to the PGA TOUR, though he will not be eligible for the playoffs. His first start is likely to come at the Turning Stone Resort Championship Sept. 17-23. Flanagan is the eighth player to make the in-season jump to the PGA TOUR.

TOUR Insider's power ranking for the Barclay's Classic: 1. Ernie Els, 2. Sergio Garcia, 3. Scott Verplank, 4. Vijay Singh, 5. Brandt Snedeker.