I think the PGA Tour is reveling in its post-FedExCup glory today as the golfer who won the end-of-season playoffs is the person who should have won according to the FedExCup’s design.

Tiger Woods won the FedExCup Sunday by placing second in THE TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, GA.

With a 6-under par performance, Woods took runner-up honors to Phil Mickelson in route to winning his second FedExCup title in its third year of existence.

However, this FedExCup victory for Tiger was a little different from his first in 2007.

With the changes in the FedExCup points setup, Tiger was forced to play consistently well in all four events of the 2009 playoffs. Not to say he didn’t in 2007 (he won two of the three events and placed in the Top-5 in all three), but he could have sloughed off with the massive points lead he developed earlier in the regular season.

Instead in 2009, Tiger’s consistency showed during the regular season (he won five tournaments before the playoffs, along with 14 Top-10 finishes) and it showed during the playoffs (one win and three Top-5 finishes in four events).

Sure, he didn’t win a major championship for the first time since 2004. But Tiger’s scoring average (68.84) was the best it has been since 2006.

In a year where he was trying to get back from knee surgery, Tiger still managed to outshoot the field and keep most golf fans awestruck by his shotmaking.

To the PGA Tour, Tiger’s consistent journey through 2009 personified what the FedExCup was designed to honor.

On an emotional sidenote, Mickelson’s victory was well deserved for a golfer who battled through professional and personal adversity for most of the season.

Only so many professional athletes could find a way to keep playing with two loved ones battling the same disease at the same time. Mickelson proved it can be done and that such hard times won’t keep a strong person down.

Overall, Sunday’s end of the season proved why people should be watching professional golf in September. Because it was in this year’s FedExCup where the best golfer won and one of the best men can win against difficult odds.

As the PGA Tour heads into the third event of the FedExCup, who can deny that Steve Stricker is in one of the best, if not the best, position to take home the silverware at the BMW Championship in Illinois, and eventually the FedExCup.

Despite a late charge by “Sunday” Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker held off the 14-time major championship winner to win last week’s Deutsche Bank Championship. Woods even shot a front-9 30 in Monday’s final round of the event, but it wasn’t enough to catch up with the steamrolling Stricker.

Coming off a runner-up finish at The Barclays a week prior, Stricker sprinted to an opening round 8-under 63, turning the TPC Boston into his own little playground.

With a minor lapse in the second round, Stricker cruised to finish the tournament, with trophy in hand, at 17-under and with one of the best shots to own the No. 1 spot for THE TOUR Championship.

Stricker’s win boosted him to the top of the FedExCup standings, one spot above Tiger Woods. The question is whether Tiger or Stricker has the upper hand going into this weekend’s event.

Sure, Tiger won five events this year, came close in a couple majors and put together two respectable finishes in The Barclay’s and Deutsche Bank Championship. But Stricker is no slouch, either.

Stricker has won three events this year and has been at the top of the money list and FedExCup standings all season. Not to mention the University of Illinois graduate will be close to his alma mater this weekend. Playing in front of the crowd from his old stomping grounds might add just a little extra juice to his game this weekend.

But most of all, Stricker has been consistent the past two weeks when it counts. Stricker streaked through last week by sticking to fairways and greens and when he needed to sink a putt or two, his putter didn’t fail him.

If Stricker manages to keep his consistency through this weekend, golf fans could see a new winner of the FedExCup by the end of THE TOUR Championship in two weeks.

As a longtime baseball fan, I love when October rolls around for Major League Baseball.

After a long, grueling regular season, every team that makes the playoffs is on close-to-even ground. Just because your team won the most games from April through September doesn’t make you a shoe-in for the World Series, but it does start you against an opponent with a lower season record.

This weekend, professional golf’s proverbial October begins with The Barclays tournament at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, NJ — and I couldn’t be more eager to watch.

The Barclays kicks of the beginning of the PGA Tour Playoffs where all competitors are challenging for the FedExCup.

In years past, the PGA Championship usually signified the end of the PGA Tour season. But since the FedExCup’s introduction in 2007, the big name players have found two more reasons to keep playing into the autumn — a shiny new trophy signifying you are the best of the PGA Tour and a $10 million bonus.

As Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh would attest, this is a great honor to have (Woods won the inaugural year, followed by Singh in 2008). However, it might be a little more difficult for the two to add this year’s silverware to their trophy case because the PGA Tour changed the format of the playoffs.

In 2007 and 2008, players earned points during the regular season to qualify for the four-tournament playoff. Once the playoffs started, the points system was reset and everyone started at an equal playing ground — kind of like the Major League Baseball playoffs.

The only problem with the system was that if someone performed well in the first two of four events, they could coast to the championship trophy in the final two tournaments, much like Vijay Singh did in 2008.

The PGA noticed this weakness in the setup and changed it for 2009 to make sure that all four tournaments mean something in the playoff series. Here is the playoff setup for the FedExCup:

-- The top 125 golfers will enter The Barclays this weekend. Of the top 125 golfers, 25 will be cut from the field that will compete during the Deutsche Bank Championship next week. Only the top 70 will compete in the BMW Championship Sept. 10-13 and just 30 will make THE TOUR Championship on Sept. 24-27.

-- The FedExCup point system will be quintupled for the playoffs. So a tournament win will equal 2,500 points for a golfer, compared to the 250 to 600 points for winning tournaments during the regular season. Such a setup will level the playing field between golfers who performed impressively during the regular season and those performing well in the playoffs. This is one major change to the points system of last year.

-- Once the field is narrowed down to 30 for the playoff finale — THE TOUR Championship — the points will be reset, assuring that the FedExCup will be decided at THE TOUR Championship.

-- THE TOUR Championship will be set up so the playoff standings leader starts with 2,500 points, second place gets 2,250 and so on down to 210 for the 30th-ranked golfer. With the reset, every golfer has a mathematical chance to win the FedExCup, some with more control of their destinies than others.

With the new system, the playoffs will allow players like Sergio Garcia (No. 89 of the 125 field) to take on Tiger Woods (leading the FedExCup regular season point standings) for the silverware if he can outplay the 2009 PGA Tour Money List leader during this string of four tournaments.

In short, September is no longer a time for most of the pros on the PGA Tour to pack up their golf bags and call it season — It’s a time to win a new piece of silverware and a multi-million dollar prize.

So, golf fans, don’t flip the TV channel over to college or pro football just yet. There’s plenty of good golf to watch in the next couple of weeks.

As I sat and watched Y.E. Yang of South Korea putt-in a birdie on the 18th hole Sunday, I couldn’t help but think about how the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, MN, would really be remembered or how the history books would illustrate it.

Watching a 37-year-old PGA rookie celebrate as the first Asian-born player to win a major, I could only notice how that fact would be buried among the greater scheme of the story that unfolded.

Which is a real shame and I’ll explain why.

Here is a golfer who surged in his last two days of major championship. Dropping putts in the third round left and right like they were old girlfriends, Yang chewed up and spit out all the challenges Hazeltine National could throw at him Saturday and nailed nearly every shot on Sunday.

But sadly his performance and his story will be trumped by the failure of another golfer.

The fact that Tiger Woods lost his first major after topping the leaderboard through three rounds, by a 110th-ranked player no less, will leave its mark on the 2009 PGA Championship. As it usually goes, the ends of impressive streaks always cast a shadow on the beginnings of new ones.

Sure, Tiger played well enough to win the championship, but he wasn’t the same player we’ve seen before.

In a majority of Tiger’s wins, he always had those moment-defining shots that were guaranteed airtime on ESPN that evening; shots that showed why he was a leap above the rest.

Like Matt Just, Life Time Fitness’ Class A PGA golf pro, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press last Monday while he assisted Woods at the Hazeltine driving range, Tiger is full of these “Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan moments where everyone will go silent right before he hits each ball.”

But during the PGA Championship, Tiger eased his way above the rest, never really hitting a shot that ended with a energetic fist pump from the walking legend which basically screamed “Try and beat me now!”

Instead, we saw Yang making those shots, defining the moments; showing no fear because he had nothing to lose during the rounds.

With a magnificent chip-in for eagle on the 14th hole, Yang proved he was the best player on the links in Minnesota this past week. And with his 200-plus-yard pin-seeking approach shot from the rough on the 18th hole, Yang showed he would not be intimidated by Wood’s red Sunday shirt or the thought of a major championship victory.

Yet sad to say, Yang’s great weekend of glory will be trumped by Tiger’s first real memorable defeat. Or to deviate from a tired cliché, the 2009 PGA championship will not be remembered for the rise of a David, but instead for the fall of a Goliath.