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By T.J. Auclair
PGATOUR.com Interactive Producer

ATLANTA -- PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem was at East Lake Golf Club on the eve of THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola -- the finale of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup -- to address the state of these inaugural Playoffs.

PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and Captain Marc Giammatteo laugh after Giammatteo is awarded an honorary membership at TPC Boston on Aug. 29 in Norton, Mass.

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Finchem was the first to admit that some changes to the format could certainly be made, but in terms of compelling golf, it's been a great success with Steve Stricker making birdies on four of his last five holes to win The Barclays, his first TOUR win in six years; a Phil Mickelson-Tiger Woods final-round pairing at the Deutsche Bank Championship, which Mickelson won; and most recently, a spectacular final-round 63 by Tiger Woods in Chicago on Sunday, where he won the BMW Championship for the fourth time.

"I think the most important thing from our perspective is, and always has been, is the FedExCup, and as a part of that, the Playoffs, accomplishing what we set out to accomplish," Finchem said. "There has been a fair amount of focus on some details of the system or opinions about the system, whether it be from fans or players. That's great, and we think that's actually contributed to a lot more interest in what the FedExCup is all about.

"In every aspect, we think, even though we have one more week to go, a full four days of competition, that it's been a very, very successful run, and we're very pleased with the impact. We're pleased with the steady growth of fan interest during the course of the year. We're delighted with the value that has been generated for sponsors. The tournaments that have been conducted thus far have significantly been elevated in terms of their charitable impact, their sales in the marketplace. We've had big crowds."

This week's TOUR Championship will feature the top-30 point-getters in the FedExCup standings with five players --Woods, Stricker, Mickelson, K.J. Choi and Rory Sabbatini -- mathematically eligible for the FedExCup Trophy and the $10 million bonus awarded to the points winner in the four-event series.

Just like any new endeavor, Finchem said there's been a learning curve for the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup and some tweaks would be made in the future. While Finchem wasn't ready to reveal those specific changes on Wednesday, he did categorize what would be evaluated in what he called, "three buckets."

The first bucket, Finchem said, would involve things related to making the Playoffs format as compelling as possible. This, he said, would entail creating a system that "players relate to well, the fans comprehend and look at, things we've seen on television the last few weeks or scenarios of what could happen versus the history, and a system that the media enjoys reporting upon and can report upon reasonably well given the limitations that the media has, whether it be written or electronic or the space that the producer on television is going to give you to talk about the system."

In terms of the second bucket, Finchem said it would be based around the question of the basic schedule.

"Does the schedule work for the fans, does it work for the TOUR as a whole, does it work for the players?" he asked. "And there are some challenges with the schedule. You know, I think that it's worked well. Obviously, virtually all the players have supported it. However, as we go into the way we do the schedules on a four or six year basis, we have to evaluate the extent to which it impacts the events before and after to some extent and whether we can command strong player support and something that the fans can follow easily."

Finally, the third bucket, Finchem said, was an area that relates to the enthusiasm players feel for competitions, particularly the Playoffs.

"I think you don't have to go in farther than the quality of play to conclude how the players have mentally prepared for this competition of the Playoffs and executed it, it's been phenomenal," he said.

Also, Finchem introduced a forum that will encourage more fan-interaction on PGATOUR.com in 2008.

"We have determined that starting on the first of the year, or as soon as we can execute it, we are going to create a place on PGATOUR.com where fans can go and speak openly of their attitudes about anything with respect to the TOUR," Finchem said. "If they're in the Playoffs, and they want to go on and do blogs and say, 'this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen,' they can do that, it will be on our site. If they want to make suggestions, they can do that. If they want to applaud Brandt Snedeker for doing a good interview with some of the media, they can do that. It's going to be wide open. The only thing we'll edit on this portion of our site is we might edit for obscenities or things we don't want young fans to look at or something like that.

"But the product and the content of what fans can post is going to be unabridged. It'll be an interesting step. We really have enjoyed the repartee of arguing amongst ourselves, with the players, with media and now fans about elements of this process. We think it's a healthy thing, and we want to encourage it going forward, so we're going to take that step next year."