Tiger Woods had little trouble dominating the thirty man field at the Tour Championship, capturing the title by eight shots over his nearest competitor.

It should come as little surprise that the world’s best golfer was able to so easily breeze his way through the four week playoff stretch, notching two victories and a second place finish in the three tournaments he played in. In the end, his play and the end of his season was simply incredible, evoking comparisons to 2000 when he so easily distanced himself from the rest of golfing’s elite. Although 2007 can’t compare to the 2000 season in terms of victories and majors, Woods did become the first player to put his name on the FedEx Cup. "I think that overall the FedExCup was a success. I think that there need to be tweaks, yes, there needs to be some tweaks, but I think overall it provided a lot of drama towards the end of the season, especially post-PGA when most of the guys shut it down," said Woods.

Although the prize for the FedEx Cup was the biggest ever in PGA Tour history, Woods seemed less enamored with the money than with the fact that he had won the tournament, "For me I don’t look at what the purse is or prize money. You play, and when you play, you play to win, period. You know, that’s how my dad raised me is you go out there and win." Clearly Tiger’s game was hitting on all cylinders. Near perfect ball striking combined with some of the best putting of his career has once again established Woods in a class by himself. "Just when you think he’s going to make a bogey or something, he ends up holing out of the bunker or making a 30- or 40-footer, whatever. He’s just tough. You know, hats off to him. He’s a great player," said Steve Stricker.

The initial fears concerning East Lake’s bent grass greens turned out to be much better than expected. Soft conditions from rain combined with slightly slower green speeds led to some of the lowest scores ever at East Lake. Zach Johnson’s Saturday 60 established a new scoring record for the tournament, and Tiger Woods total of 257 established a new four round scoring record. Zach Johnson said, "It’s all about approach shots into the greens. When you don’t have to think about release or where it’s going to bounce — when the greens are firm and fast, it just brings everything in significantly. But when you can hit a high, towering 4-iron and it plugs, that just makes things easier."

In the end, the FedEx Cup became nothing more than a battle for second place, and although not as compelling, Steve Stricker was barely able to nudge Phil Mickelson to claim the second place and cash in a three million dollar second place check. The playoff series has also been quite a coming out party for Steve Stricker, who just two years ago was barely a blip in the golfing public’s radar – Stricker is now the fifth ranked golfer in the world and is realizing the potential and achievements so many expected from him earlier in his career. Stricker said, "The run that I’ve been on, heading all the way back to the U.S. Open, really, each week it seems like I’ve gotten in contention, had a lot of opportunities maybe… It’s been so much fun. I’ve enjoyed it. You know, I feel like I’ve grown as a player and I’ve learned a lot again. It’s been great."

But what of the FedEx Cup system as a whole? The Tour and fans seem divided over it’s effectiveness. Tiger Woods himself seemed utterly detached from the whole race, skipping the first event and basically ignoring the points race in favor of simply winning tournaments. Phil Mickelson skipped the crucial third event, the BMW in Chicago, stating a desire to be with his family and rest before the final event. Jim Furyk was critical of the number of players who entered the playoff system, "I think in our sport, ‘playoff’ is a very loosely used word. I’ll give you ‘playoff,’ but it’s not like it would be in other sports, like a head-to-head elimination or something like that. In football, there’s 32 teams in the NFL and if I’m correct, 12 teams go to the playoffs. This year, 125 guy also keep their tour card and 144 people are going to the playoffs. So that’s roughly 110 percent of the league. In baseball, what do we have eight teams that go to the playoffs? And everybody complains in hockey and basketball that half the league gets in at 16.

Everyone complains and they are 50 percent and we are 110." Phil Mickelson was critical not of the FedEx Cup as a whole, but of the rush of tournaments at the end of the season, "For me it’s 10 out of 13 weeks in a row that start back at the AT & T National in D.C…. I have another couple outings so I have four days off before I have a four-week stretch with the FedEx Cup, and then we have the Presidents Cup a week later. So it’s not just the four weeks that’s the problem. I’m playing 10 events in 13 weeks, which is half of my schedule last year, in a three-month span."

Furyk and others were expressing some frustration over playing four weeks in a row. Steve Stricker said, "I was starting to feel a little physically tired the last few days. But it’s just a mental grind every day… I was getting at the end of my rope out here, too. It was becoming a long deal, but I had to stay focused and try to play good coming in."

Although Commissioner Tim Finchem wasn’t necessarily candid about his plans for the future in the FedEx Cup, he did say that changes were likely although forcing players to play in all events would likely not be an option, "There are some ideas, but it’s too early to make conclusions. We really haven’t, you know, gone around and sat down with the players and said, tell us more about your thinking. So it’s too early to make those kinds of conclusions. I would say that generally mandating players to do something in our sport is something we would always shy away from. I don’t particularly want to go down that path."