"Parts of the bossman's answer were tougher to track than a balata ball bouncing through a blacktop parking lot."

A day after the unveiling of the latest FedEx Cup, Steve Elling has been thinking about the bizarre notion that a player can skip a playoff event and still win the thing. It's a FedEx Cup tradition, Steve. Come on!

As he unveiled the new points program Tuesday night, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem was innocently asked whether players would be required to make all four starts in order to take home the richest bonus in golf. Even for a spin-control artiste, parts of the bossman's answer were tougher to track than a balata ball bouncing through a blacktop parking lot.

"I wouldn't say it can't happen, but I think the incentives are there that it's more and more important as you go on," Finchem said of the Cup schedule. "So, yeah, you need to play. Of course, our role is to put the best product out there, and hope that players believe in it and want to take advantage of it, and I think that's what we'll see in '09."

Need is a relative term, as it turns out.