- FedExCup Points: 50,000
- Purse: $7.0 million
- Winning Share: $1,260,000
- Yards: 7,415
PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent
The beauty of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup this week is manifested in South Africa's Retief Goosen.
While there are still three weeks left to decide the inaugural winner of the FedExCup, there is real urgency at this week's Deutsche Bank Championship for a number of players, including, most notably, the two-time U.S. Open champion. Goosen, 38, is the only TOUR member in the top 20 in the Official World Golf Ranking who travels to the TPC Boston in suburban Norton, Mass., currently sitting outside the top 70 in FedExCup points.
Goosen, 17th in the world, is languishing in 86th place in the FedExCup standings after starting 87th at The Barclays. He must move up at least 16 spots to the top 70 to advance to the third round at the BMW Championship in Chicago. Then he has to find a way to move up 40 more places into the top 30 for the TOUR Championship presented by Coca Cola -- a tournament in which he has finished fourth or better the last four years, including the title in 2004.
Goosen, making his debut at TPC Boston, trails No. 70 Steve Flesch by nearly 1,500 points. He trails No. 30 Robert Allenby by 4,617 points. It won't take a Herculean effort to move on the third round, but he's going to need something around fifth place, depending on how players near that bubble position perform. By the same token, Flesh and players ranked immediately ahead of him on the points list -- Peter Lonard, Sean O'Hair, Arron Oberholser and Stephen Ames -- need to play four rounds and protect their positions.
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Meanwhile, at the top, Steve Stricker, K.J. Choi and Rory Sabbatini have now demoted Tiger Woods from leader to pursuer as Woods joins the fray beginning Friday after taking last week's opener off to recover from fatigue, which no doubt was most palpably felt in the arm he uses to hoist trophies, since he's won five of them this year, including his last two starts.
Woods is the defending champion for the fifth edition of the DeutscheBank Championship, but he, along with other former winners Adam Scott, Vijay Singh and Olin Browne might be starting from square one on the Arnold Palmer-designed TPC Boston, which recently underwent a sweeping renovation at the hands of Gil Hanse and player consultant Brad Faxon.
More than 1.2 million square feet of new sod was put down in a remodeling that actually trimmed more than 200 yards from the layout. The par-71 TPC Boston went from 7,415 yards to 7,207. In an effort to make it more strategically challenging and yet more in harmony with the setting, Hanse added a collection of new bunkers, regraded some fairways and changed several greens. Chocolate drop mounds and grass bunkers further changed the layout's look and feel.
Whether the alterations make the course harder or easier is not as important as altering the nature of the test it presents, one on which the field averaged 72.614 strokes last year, more than 1.5 strokes higher than in 2005 when players combined to score 71.017.
Worth knowing:
• This week's DeutscheBank Championship field features 118 of the 120 who qualified. No. 15 Scott Verplank had been planning all along to take this week off for family considerations and to rest for the final push. Bernhard Langer, No. 59, makes his Champions Tour debut this week at the Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach.
• Vijay Singh could be a dangerous man this week, and not only because he holds the course record of 61 at TPC Boston. Singh, 44, has missed the cut in his last two starts, something he has done just twice since 2000. The last time was late 2005, and he went on to post a tie for fourth in the next event, the TOUR Championship.
• Singh and Woods were paired together in the final round last year, when Woods followed Singh's 61 with a 63 to overcome a three-shot deficit and win by two. As Nos. 4 and 5 in the FedExCup standings, the two will be paired together for the first two rounds at TPC Boston, joining No. 6 Phil Mickelson in a battle among the last three winners of the PGA Championship.
• Interestingly, Singh and Woods each won at Boston the month after taking the PGA title. Mickelson, the '05 PGA champion, did not play the DeutscheBank Championship that year, and, in fact, is making his debut in the tournament.
• Singh, Woods and Scott each have a victory and a runner-up finish at TPC Boston.
• How much can one hole alter fortunes in the playoffs? Consider the status of rookie Doug LaBelle, who made a 6-foot birdie putt at the 72nd hole at Westchester Country Club in The Barclays to earn the last qualifying spot, 120th, in this week's Deutsche Bank Championship. LaBelle, who edged Steve Allan by 25 points for the last slot, is 3,925 points behind No. 70 Steve Flesch and needs no worse than a two-way tie for second to advance to Round 3 at the BMW Championship.
• Rich Beem was the only other player outside the top 120 at The Barclays who played well enough to climb high enough to earn a berth in this week's field. He moved up 23 places to 113th with his tie for seventh at Westchester. Beem trails Flesch by nearly 3,500 points. After Beem, the next biggest jumps in the standings were realized by Ian Poulter (plus 18), Robert Garrigus (16), and Flesch and Stricker (11 each).
• Thirty men who qualified for the DeutscheBank Championship had never before entered the event, including four of the top 11 in the FedExCup standings: No. 3 Rory Sabbatini, No. 6 Mickelson, No. 10 Ernie Els, and No. 11 Mark Calcavecchia.
• Newly minted U.S. Amateur champion Colt Knost of Pilot Point, Texas, who joined Ryan Moore as the only men to win the Amateur and the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship in the same year, said he intends to seek an exemption to play in the Valero Texas Open in October. He has yet to make up his mind about turning pro, since he would be foregoing berths in the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open.
TOUR Insider's power ranking for the DeutscheBank Championship:
1. Tiger Woods
2. Retief Goosen
3. Adam Scott
4. K.J. Choi
5. Stephen Ames
