Surprises. Magic. Fun. It was all there Sunday at Barclays

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JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- In the end, it was all worth it. The rainy conditions for most of the week, the clouds that put a gray blanket over this country's most recognizable skyline, the complaints about a golf course that some players considered either too long or too contrived. Or both.

In the end, those things didn't matter at The Barclays. Under a fantastically sunny day, with the sailboats and cruise ships steaming down the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty sunning herself nearby, we got an old-fashioned, edge-of-your-seat, twisting-and-turning shootout. The kind of shootout that gets the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup off to a rousing -- and certainly surprising -- start.

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Actually, it's only surprising when you look at who captured the 2,500 FedExCup points and the big, glass trophy Sunday, as Heath Slocum came out of hibernation to win for the first time in four years. Slocum barely squeezed into the Playoffs as the next-to-last man on the FedExCup points list. Now he's third, and his confidence is booming.

OK, that wasn't the only surprise. Tiger Woods misreading a 6-foot, 10-inch putt for birdie on the 72nd hole -- a birdie that would have gotten him into a playoff -- was a surprise.

And Steve Stricker, Slocum's playing partner on Sunday, failing to get up-and-down for par after finding the fairway bunker with his tee shot? That was a surprise, too. Stricker ranks first on the TOUR in scrambling. He makes par or better nearly 68 percent of the time when he misses a green in regulation. But he couldn't nail that 10-foot putt after Slocum rolled in his own par-saving putt from 21 feet.

Yes, it was surprising.

It was also, from Slocum's vantage point, "magical."

There must have been some magic involved for Slocum to hold off the likes of Woods and Stricker and Padraig Harrington and Ernie Els, the four guys just below him on the leaderboard. The big boys came to play Sunday, and it was a blast watching them battle each other while trying to catch the unlikely contender, Slocum, on the back nine.

After third-round co-leaders Paul Goydos and Steve Marino fell back -- they would eventually shoot a combined 10 over on Sunday -- Slocum and Stricker worked their way to the top. Slocum's big move was the 158-yard 7-iron that he holed for eagle at the par-4 fifth.

So they arrived at the 18th tee box as co-leaders at 9 under. Just ahead, Woods had missed his birdie putt to tie. Slocum could hear the groans in the gallery.

With Woods finishing at 8 under, and Harrington (who birdied 18) and Els (who didn't) already in the clubhouse with the same score, Slocum and Stricker both knew that 9 under would be good enough to avoid a playoff with that threesome, who happened to have a combined 20 major victories under their belts.

"We wanted to, at all costs, avoid that," Slocum said. "You would have to think you're going to have to birdie the last to win that playoff and maybe birdie it again. I mean, who knows?"

And then when both players found the bunker with their tee shots and came up short of the green with their approaches? "I figured one of us is going to get it up and down," Stricker said. "It came down to a couple of putts."

It usually does.

Slocum made his putt on the 72nd hole; Stricker, like Woods before him, did not. "It's about making putts," Slocum said. "It's not all about length."

Bemoaned Woods, who also missed a three-footer on the fourth hole: "To miss as many putts as I did this week (and) still have a chance on the last green with a putt -- it goes to show you how good I am at hitting it. That's a great sign. Just need to make a few more putts."

Woods struggled all week with Liberty National's undulating greens, and whenever he was asked about the course hosting future PGA TOUR events, he withheld comment -- although the silence was deafening. This course doesn't particularly suit his tastes.

Tiger, of course, is Tiger -- he will play well on any course, no matter what he thinks about it. But perhaps the players who embraced Liberty National had the advantage over the players who didn't.

Harrington called the course "fantastic" and thinks it's worthy of a major. Els said the course was fair and that "they should play this thing (here) every year."

Stricker said the course isn't one of his favorites but that he didn't look negatively at it. He said you have to play with a positive attitude, and negative vibes about a course will lead to negative scores. "You better be going out there with an attitude that you can still play well here," he said. "That's what my attitude was."

Slocum, of course, loves the course now. And he obviously loves his position in the FedExCup standings as the second leg moves to TPC Boston for the Deutsche Bank Championship.

He's the underdog story, but we will see if he can sustain it. And we will see how the big boys react. We'll also see if another underdog emerges, or if there's a sleeping giant out there (we're looking at you, Lefty). There's still a long ways to go, a lot of FedExCup points to be handed out.

"It was a great championship," said Stricker, despite coming up short. "I thought it had a lot of excitement."

Amen to that.