The FedEx Cup, with $10m going to the winner, was hailed at its launch as "the exciting new era in golf" and the big-money bunfight starts in earnest this week with the first of a series of four season-ending play-offs on the PGA Tour.
"Exciting" might be pushing the boat out a little. The format is so convoluted some players have been referring to it as the FedEx Thingy. How it works is certainly not widely understood. Phil Mickelson is one who has declared himself baffled, but it's new, let's give it a chance and it might produce some thrills.
The US PGA Championship, as the final major, tended to mark the climax of the season. The FedEx Cup is not going to upstage that, but what it is hoped to achieve is to provide a clear conclusion instead of meandering towards the end amid a mood of deepening apathy.
Of a total purse of $35m, the $10m, claimed to be the biggest prize in world sport, will not exactly come in the form of a big bag of jingling money that could be donated to charity, as KJ Choi said he would do if he wins.
Much more boringly it has been described as an annuity that will be placed in retirement accounts, and it might be 20 years before the winner, who will probably be Tiger Woods even though he has opted out of the first play-off, can get his hands on it.
Points have been collected on the PGA Tour all season, another layer of statistics to a sport laden with rankings, orders of merit and performance data, and naturally the world No.1 is a long way ahead of anyone else.
Woods, though, has more to do to win the big prize than you might think looking at his huge lead. He has 30,574 points compared to second-placed Vijay Singh's 19,129 and the mischievous part of this system is that the points will be reset for the play-offs so that he has a lead of only 1000. The absent Woods will start with 100,000 points and Singh 99,000. It reduces to 84,700 for the player who is 144th, and more points will be earned based on finishes in the play-off events so that, in theory, the player currently places 144th can still finish on top.
All 144 will have the chance to contest this week's Barclays Championship, and the bottom 24 will be eliminated. The field of 120 for the Deutsche Bank Championship next week will reduce to 70 for the BMW Championship the following week, and finally 30 for the Tour Championship at East Lake, Georgia, on September 13 to 16, after which the player with the most points will be handed the dough.
That could make for an untidy conclusion, as the winner of the Tour Championship will not necessarily win the FedEx Cup as well. Indeed, the winner of the FedEx Cup could be determined before the Tour Championship even starts.
There are two main reasons for its introduction. First, it is to create the kind of shorter, sharper season that Woods and Mickelson, who drive the TV ratings, have been seeking. Woods is wanting it to be shorter still and it will be interesting to see if he can finish on top, despite playing in only three of the four events.
Secondly, the series is to end the PGA Tour with a bang before golf vanishes in US consciousness as the American football season gets under way.
The effect of the restructuring has been felt on this side of the Atlantic, with many tournaments short of top players who have been lured to the ever more lucrative PGA Tour.
Europeans, accordingly, are making their presence felt with Sergio Garcia (12th), Padraig Harrington (20th), Justin Rose (21st), Luke Donald (22nd) and Henrik Stenson (31st) all at the top end of the points standings.
After the play-offs, there will be lesser PGA Tour events at which the lower orders can fight out who retains their Tour cards and at that point, with no significant competition from the US, the focus will return to the European Tour, which will be lifted by the returns of Harrington & Co.
The British Masters that has recently heralded the start of British involvement on the Tour in May has been shifted to September 20 to 23, the week after the Tour Championship, to mark the start of a strong tail-end of the season.
The Seve Trophy, Dunhill Links Championship and HSBC World Matchplay Championship will follow in a rousing conclusion to the European Tour, leading up to the Volvo Masters in Spain.
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