With the start of the 2007 PGA Tour season last week in Hawaii the tour kicked off the FedEx Cup which could be a huge leap forward for an already growing golf viewership or a disaster waiting to happen.

The FedEx Cup which was designed by PGA Tour commission Tim Finchem has the ability to energize golf fans and sports fans for that matter late into the fall with it’s exciting playoff format and huge first place prize of $10 million.

This new format tabulates points earned at events throughout the year instead of merely relying on the money list which has always been the measure of a good year. It then counts those points earned and rewards the top 144 players with a spot in the FedEx Cup Playoffs which consist of four events in August – September.

As good as this all sounds there are definitely a few problems with it that could end up being a disaster for the PGA Tour. Here are just a few of them…

- Tiger Woods and his wife Elin have their baby late in the summer. This would spell disaster for the Tour since it solely relies on him being in the fields for TV viewership and if Tiger like any other proud Poppa wants to stay home for a month or so with his new baby, the Tour and his ability to accrue points in the new system will severely he hurt.

- The FedEx Cup will go head to head with the first couple weeks of the NFL season and as much as regular sports fans like to play and watch golf… the vast majority of those non-diehard golf fans will most certainly be watching their favorite teams play in the NFL.

- There’s a small chance the winner of the Tour Championship (which is the final 30 player field) in the FedEx Cup race will not win the FedEx Cup. As I understand it the points will be worth quite a bit more for first, second and third and so on, but there’s still a chance that another player who already finished earlier on the final day could have accrued enough playoff points to win the FedEx Cup while the winners coming down the stretch late in the day on Sunday could virtually be playing for nothing. Well, I guess nothing is a little drastic since it’s still for a large amount of cash, but it’s still possible that the winner could be inside the clubhouse eating dinner and relaxing for hours while the final groups are coming down the last few holes. This simply doesn’t make for very good or exciting TV.

I guess we’ll just all have to see how it plays out, but these are just a few examples of how it could backfire. I however still hold out hope that we’ll see Vijay, Tiger and Phil coming down the stretch on that Sunday in Atlanta.

Here is a link to the Official FedEx Cup Rules.