Tiger and Phil Deliver for PGA Tour in FedEx Finale

ATLANTA -- That went well.

Anytime the PGA Tour can put Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in headlines on the same day, life is good. So while some pesky loopholes remain in the most-recently revised edition of the FedEx Cup playoff series, none of them showed up Sunday at East Lake Golf Club.

Mr. Popular 1 and Mr. Popular 1A provided the PGA Tour's regular season with a near-perfect close. Mickelson broke out of a funk with some of his best golf of a tough year to win the Tour Championship. Woods, the season leader with six victories, got what he deserved -- recognition as the year's best performer.

Golf scored.

Glory be! The FedEx Cup actually worked better than it was designed.

The PGA Tour had relevancy to the end of September.

There was intrigue instead of indifference. There was something to be decided instead of something to just get finished.

"We're certainly pleased," PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said.

The FedEx Cup was born three years ago in an effort to prolong the tour's life beyond the season's final major. The problem was after the PGA Championship was played in August, nobody bothered to watch. By the time the Tour Championship finally brought the season to an end, interest had already left.

College football and the NFL cranked up and even the golfers didn't want to think about golf. Late-season tournaments were skipped depending on whether the Florida Gators, Oklahoma State Cowboys or LSU Tigers had big games that weekend.

So the PGA Tour threw money at the problem and created the FedEx Cup, a four-tournament playoff and points list that pays a $10 million bonus to the last man standing.

It sounded good, but the first two years didn't work. Woods, in 2007, and Vijay Singh, last year, had the titles locked up before the Tour Championship even arrived.

Yawn, again, and a massive offseason tweaking took place. New changes guaranteed no player could wrap up the title before the Tour Championship, which is good, but also created situations where a golfer, winless for the season, could have slipped in as the year's top player -- a potentially embarrassing result.

But, much like the BCS continually manages to do, the FedEx Cup dodged its shortcomings.

"Well, it provided a lot of excitement for sure," said Steve Stricker, in the chase until the very end. "There might be some tweaking again, who knows. But I thought it provided a lot of excitement for the fans and players.

"All the players coming in here this week had a legitimate chance at winning the FedEx Cup."

That's what made fans look. Woods won six times this year, but under the right circumstances, could have been beaten out by a number of players. One very real scenario was Woods being edged out by Jim Furyk, who mathematically could have done it without winning a single event this year.

But he didn't.

Whew.

"You know, this year we had a lot of kind of unknowns going into the playoffs," Woods said. "Because of the resetting [of points], guys could have gone the entire year without winning and still have won the FedEx Cup. But, you know, you have to play well at the end, and that's kind of how it's structured. It's the system.

"You can win 20 events throughout the year, and then reset. It's very similar to what they do with NASCAR, what they try to do with playoffs in other sports. It's jut kind of our version."

While short of a ringing endorsement, it wasn't a complaint.

Woods won. Mickelson won.

Golf made news. Television ratings were up 83 percent from a year ago.

It worked.