FanHouse PaulGoydos

The four-tournament FedEx Cup might be billed as the playoffs, but Tiger Woods (along with just about everybody else in the field) are treating it with all the reverence of a practice round. Maybe it's the rain-soaked conditions, or the tricked-out, wannabe links-inspired course set-up. Or maybe the manufactured drama of the FedEx Cup isn't working.

So call the next month of golf whatever you want, but it feels a lot like the PGA Tour season officially ended with last week's Wyndham Championship. Hey, it could be worse: we could be subjected to made-for-teevee skins games.

In any event, we're three rounds into the Barclays, and 24-year-old Webb Simpson, the 36-hole leader, stumbled through moving day, dropping two shots off the lead after signing for a 1-over, 71. Meanwhile, Paul Goydos and Steve Marino each needed 68 strokes to get around Liberty National and are tied atop the leaderboard at 9-under heading to the final day.

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An inch. That was all that stood between Sergio Garcia and a playoff last week at the Wyndham Championship. Sitting in the greenside bunker on the 18th hole, the 29-year-old Spaniard found himself in need of a heroic hole-out to join Ryan Moore and Kevin Stadler in a playoff to decide the '09 champion.

The bunker shot looked perfect, coming out, biting perfectly and rolling like it was going to cash for the needed birdie. It was, as the golfing world has tended to say, too perfect of a shot, and the spin kept it from rolling that extra inch. Tap-in par, one shot out of the playoff, another hung-head for Garcia. Most times, Sergio lets these things affect him. Thursday at the Barclays, Garcia came out firing, posting a 6-under 65 to join Paul Goydos and Steve Marino as the leaders after day one.

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Ho-hum. That was Tiger Woods' opening round of the FedEx Cup at Liberty National in New Jersey. A 1-under 70 for the current FedEx points leader was good enough to stay within shouting distance of the leaders, but it was a pretty boring day by Tiger standards.

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Tiger Woods is 33, has been on tour since 1996, and has 14 major victories. Save those junior tournaments where he was the youngest player in the field, I don't think he's ever been called underrated.

That changed yesterday when PGA Tour player Paul Goydos told the Boston Globe exactly that:

His legacy is one of smattered popularity. One minute he's slapping an iron with his eyes closed around a tree that Paul Bunyan couldn't have figured a way through, and the next he's doing things that would make even the closest to him scratch their head in troubled wonder.

Sergio Garcia's career as a pro golfer has been confusing, not by his play, but more by his ability to always pick the worst time to do certain things, so the fact that he might have found his game again, and is overcoming some personal problems, is music to professional golf's ears. We've been waiting for this moment, we just weren't sure it would come again.

In an effort to keep our golf visitors well informed on what is going on around the Internet, Range Balls is our weekly link dump. Every Tuesday during golf season, we will toss out some of the most interesting things we came across. If you have a tip, e-mail us at fanhousegolf@gmail.com. Enjoy the links.

-- You know what happens when you let a golf blogger lose on the grounds of an LPGA event with a camera and the always entertaining Christina Kim? Magic. Pure, Incredible, magic. [Wei Under Par]

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- At least one game has integrity. Manny Ramirez, with his 50-game suspension, is just another cheater in a line of steroid users in baseball. How can you trust anyone anymore?

Well, thankfully, we have golf. Not one golfer on the PGA Tour has ever failed a steroid test.

Not ... one.

Zippo. In the power age of golf, when fitness has started to include weightlifting because muscles help to keep up with the Tigers and Phils, every ... single ... golfer is clean.

It is the most famous golf hole in America, and if not for another famous 17th, the Road Hole at St. Andrews, it would be the top hole in the world. It's the island green at TPC Sawgrass, and with The Players Championship coming up this weekend, it's in full view.

The thing is, any golfer's opinion of the 17th is displayed firmly on their sleeve. They either love the hole or want to blow it up, but why such black-or-white thoughts? Well, there are a few reasons.

With the morning guys glad to be far away from Oakland Hills and the afternoon guys struggling with some rain and inclement weather, it sure seems like a mini party at the PGA Championship!

Phil Mickelson, after a Texas Giant-like front nine, got himself under control and finished at even-par 70. Of the last five PGA champions, only one has failed to break 70 in his Thursday's round. After the round, Lefty talked about the difference in the golf course from yesterday to today.

"I was surprised at the transition, how different it was from yesterday to today," Mickelson said. "I thought it would be a little firmer, a little faster, but it got a lot firmer and a lot faster ... That's going to make it play pretty difficult on the weekend unless we get some rain."

Not everyone was so nice when discussing the conditions of the golf course, namely Lee Westwood, who some morons were picking to win this crazy tournament.

"(The only way to make it fair is to) cut all the rough out. I think the US Open was set up perfectly. It rewards accuracy and penalizes you if you are off liner. I didn't see that today. I asked my partners if I was out of order and they said 'No, if you are slightly off line you are crucified'. In my opinion it is too thick around the greens as well. It takes the skill away from chipping. Yoy don't need it. The course is 7,500 yards long, the greens are firm, and the pins are tucked away. They are sucking the fun out of the Major Championships when you set it up like that."

Paul Goydos is funny. He's also giving -- he's the dude who let Sergio Garcia win this year's Players Championship. Anyway, during last week's AT & T National, Goydos was asked if the winners of this year's British Open and PGA Championship should have an asterisk by their names since Eldrick's laid up in Florida.

Mr. Goydos, if you please: "Then we need to put an asterisk next to all 18 of Jack's majors, because Tiger didn't play in any of those."

Golf.com's John Garrity agrees with Godyos, but has a slightly different take:

I say there should be no asterisk because whoever wins the next two majors will have beaten the same field that Tiger outclassed to win his 14 major championships –- i.e., everybody but Tiger. It would actually devalue Tiger's accomplishments to say that another golfer isn't worthy of respect when he beats the very same players under major-championship conditions.

Frankly, it might be going a bit too far to start passing out asterisks since Tiger is currently disabled. I mean, it's not like he was winning every tournament he entered. A better use of the asterisk might be for those rare instances when John Daly makes a cut, or Phil Mickelson only carries five wedges or more than two drivers. You know, the truly important stuff.