The Barclays preview: Tiger who? Fedexhiccup what? Who cares?

I love the PGA Tour website: it’s a super resource for anyone following the tour. And it’s obvious they’ve burnt a few midnight candles to get their redesign just right. A bit on the dark side, a trifle moody blue, but very slick. A pity some of the features don’t match it for quality.

In their desperation to kindle some excitement in their new competition they include a piece entitled simply “Expert picks: FedEx Cup” (I point blank refuse to mimic the illiterate marketing ploy of joining up those words. Only a German would write FedExCup.) Guess what? The experts all pick Tiger Woods. Duh!

Well, all bar a couple of poor souls who must have been leaned on to help give the appearance of an open race by plumping for Jim Furyk and Vijay Singh. But even the Furyk backer states: “If Tiger Woods wants to win the inaugural FedEx (my space) Cup, he probably will.”

You’ve got that one right. Strikes me all those making such a song and dance over him skipping the Barclays have missed the real point. At least it doesn’t kill the “competition” stone dead before the Tour Championship is even a glimmer in a golfer’s eye. Is anyone seriously suggesting Tiger isn’t going to add $10m to his pension fund by the end of this process?

If he doesn’t, it’ll only be because he thinks his pension is well catered for already and he’s really played enough golf for one year. And while we’re on the subject, what kind of a prize is a pension anyway, except an admission they couldn’t scrape up enough shekels for a big up-front one?

It’s a shame Tiger’s not in the Barclays and the notion of the FedEx (mind the gap) Cup as a nail-biting competition doesn’t compute for me. But I’m not hugely bothered either. It has brought the top 144 golfers together for a four-week head-to-head and that can only be better than the way things tailed off in the past. Just sit back, enjoy the golf and ignore all those nonsensical FedUp points permutations commentators will undoubtedly spew out over the next four weeks.

So how to read Westchester in the opener? I’m going to by-pass last year’s stats: that was a decidedly wet and very windy affair, to the point where balls were taking mystery tours of the greens. Although they’ve had a downpour this week the forecasters are sticking to a warm, cloudy but largely windless story for the weekend.

This is a big boys stage and much of the betting money is going on proven winners here: the favourite Ernie Els, a two-time winner in the nineties; Sergio Garcia, a more recent double winner; Open Champion Padraig Harrington, who won here two years ago with an amazing putt; and defending champion Singh, who has three wins.

Els has been threatening the big comeback win for some time now and his most recent spell - 4th at Carnoustie, 3rd at the PGA Championship two weeks ago sandwiching a 22nd at the Bridgestone, suggests it might not be far away. I feel the only thing lacking is a bit of self-belief, a shortfall expressed mostly through his putter.

I imagine Garcia will be avoiding Boo Weekley like the plague after the PGA scorecard cockup. Even so, his performance there wasn’t impressive: not surprisingly the Open seems to have knocked a bit of stuffing out of him.

I don’t fancy Furyk either, although he has generally played well here, because of his recent back trouble and poor performances. And I don’t much care for Phil Mickelson: he’s not an end of season person, his form is not great, and this side of 2000 he’s never cracked top 10 here. Harrington is one of those “definite maybes” and I’m also in two minds about Singh. His 2nd in Canada was rather by default and he hasn’t shone since. But this course is clearly to his liking - it is after all where he broke a long drought last year.

Others to keep an eye on are: Adam Scott, second last year and on the evidence of 12th in the PGA over his recent awful slump; Scott Verplank, 9th in the Bridgestone and PGA; and K J Choi, with a great set of stats and two wins and three top 12s from his last six matches (the other was a missed cut).

My stats also tell me Billy Mayfair, fresh from his second place last week, is in with a shout - he was seventh here two years ago. Top of the pile, though, is Charles Warren, especially hot with his irons these days, although missed cuts in his last two Barclays outings are a dampener. And just a mention of Stuart Appleby: 12th in the PGA, three shots off the lead here last year before a lousy final round, and a juicy price of 70 that might provide a bit of a trade.