In fact, you already might be fed up with the FedEx Cup.

"I think it's a great thing. It's going to heat up to a great finale, " said Vijay Singh no doubt before he carded a first-round 75 at the Barclays Championship at Westchester. However, the 2002 USPGA champion, Rich Beem, had earlier turned up his nose at the play-off concept. "I sure hope there never comes a day when a kid says, 'I have this putt to win the FedEx Cup.' I really hope kids are dreaming about winning a major championship."

It's not that the players are divided in their opinions, it's more that they're not sure how the PGA Tour's latest brainchild is going to pan out. Phil Mickelson reckoned that one day the FedEx Cup could have the same allure as the Masters which started life as a low-key invitational in a converted orchard in Georgia. "There's also a chance that four years from now it will be a flop, " he added.

What can be said about the FedEx Cup at this stage is that it is a risky throw of the dice.

Desperate to boost television rankings during the fallow weeks between the USPGA Championship in August and the traditional end-of-season Tour Championship in late October . . . a period when Tiger Woods winds down and Phil Mickelson likes to disappear off the radar completely . . . the PGA Tour came up with a play-off system.

The calendar would be shuffled around, and four high-profile events would mark the end of the regular season. The Barclays Championship, followed by the Deutsche Bank Championship near Boston, then the BMW Championship (formerly the Western Open) in Chicago, with everything coming hopefully to a dramatic head at the Tour Championship in Atlanta.

The players would qualify by earning points throughout the year with the top 144 at the Barclays being whittled down to 120, then 70 and finally to an elite 30 for the Tour Championship. There would be serious money on offer too.

Nearly $30m in cash prizes over the four tournaments, plus a further $35m in bonus payments from FedEx.

But even before a ball was struck over the past few days, FedEx were struggling to deliver. Firstly, there was the whole issue of the way the points were allocated at the start of the playoffs. Woods, the tour's highest earner this year, was given 100,000 points, with Singh in second place on 99,000 points.

With 9,000 points available for a win in the first three events . . . bear with me here . . . and 10,300 available for victory at the Tour Championship, the gap at the top can be closed quite easily.

Yet Woods earned $7.8m before the playoffs compared to Singh's $4.5m, but now has only 1,000 points of an advantage. Meanwhile, Jeff Gove, who qualified in 144th place with prize money of just $350,000 was allocated nearly 85,000 points before he teed it up at Westchester.

So, this points reset is little more than fabrication aimed at bunching the players and giving everyone in the field a mathematical chance of winning the FedEx Cup. Woods has five wins to date including a major championship, Singh has two wins, yet there is hardly anything separating them according to the FedEx rankings.

If all that wasn't enough, Woods then decided he wasn't going to play at the Barclays citing fatigue after his back-to-back victories at the Bridgestone Invitational and the USPGA.

Meanwhile, PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem, came out spinning like one of Woods's lob wedges. "People seemed to think Tiger (left) was going to win this thing, and now it's not sure that he's going to win it, so it creates more excitement."

"He's in a position that he can take a week off and still go and win this thing, " said Padraig Harrington was in 21st place in the FedEx list at the start of the Barclays. "The rest of us don't have that luxury." Well, not so sure, as it seems as if Mickelson will add to the PGA Tour's woes by opting out of one of the remaining events as well.

So, no Woods for the moment, and when all is said and done at the Tour Championship finale, no cash either.

Because the $10m cheque for the inaugural FedEx Cup winner is effectively rainy day money with the funds stashed away for the player's retirement. "My son is probably really happy that it's going to be deferred until I'm 60, " said Trevor Immelman, "but I'd rather have the money now." As for Woods, he reckoned he could be dead by the time his retirement fund came around.

One of the PGA Tour's problems is that it has no jurisdiction over any of the four major championships, so it came up with its own four play-off events. The FedEx Cup with its deferred payments and its artificial points system is a poor relation of the majors. And always will be.