I guess after Bart Bryant’s three victories in 15 months, capped off by his Tour Championship win last week, I’ll have to start paying more attention to the soft-spoken Texan with the wonderful mustache. But what a fitting way to end the 2005 golf season. With Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen on the course, along with most of the rest of the top thirty players in the world, it was Bryant who took the final victory. season in Atlanta, a tournament that is becoming increasingly prestigious and will have even more in 2007 when it becomes a kind of Super Bowl of golf.

So this is for you, Bart Bryant. Here’s to you, Ted Purdy. For you, Wes Short, Jr. For you, Jason Bohn. Here’s to you, Olin Browne. Somewhere, someone saw something in you that not many others saw. Somewhere, someone beat you guys big.

For all my focus on unknown wins this year, many leading horses also won. Woods and Singh won early — Singh in the second week of the season, Woods in the third. Phil Mickelson won in the fifth and sixth week. By the end of April, all three would win at least one more time, including Tiger’s dramatic win at The Masters in April. Woods would also win the British Open and competed in all four majors in 2005. This was his best season since 2000.

Mickelson won the PGA Championship later in the year. Also winning in 2005 were Goosen, Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott (an unofficial rain-shortened win in February at the Nissan Open), Jim Furyk, Stuart Appleby (who repeated in Kapalua to start the year), David Toms and Padraig Harrington. , which he won twice (the first time in March, his first Tour victory).

Rain was again a frustrating issue for the first few months of the season. It took until summer to dry. And in mid-August, the biggest on the books, the season came to a close with one unexciting tournament after another unexciting, hosted by fewer and fewer stars. On Wednesday of last week, ahead of the Tour Championship, tour committee Tim Finchem revealed plans to address the issue of declining interest after the PGA Championship because many top players don’t play together in late-season tournaments. I’ve complained about these silly events almost every week on the stretch, so I’m glad to see the issue being addressed. However, what little we know of the 2007 plan raises questions.

The idea is to move the Tour Championship to September as the culminating event in a kind of playoff series called the FedEx Cup. The lame post-PGA Championship events I referred to will still be played, under the title of “Quest for the Card”. Virtually none of the best players in the game will play in these events, as few do now, because they aren’t aiming for #125 or better in the world to retain their Tour cards. This will, in effect, turn into a goofy season without star power.

Moving the Tour Championship forward is a great idea because it gets closer to the last Major and ends the season before the NFL actually starts. There is a potential problem with FedEx Cup, at least as it stands now (Tiger has said he met with Finchem several times about the proposed changes and each time got a different response, much is still up in the air — you can Bet Tiger is in mind by Finchem, et al, back in Ponte Vedra as they try to put this together), which is that three tournaments leading up to the Tour Championship will comprise most of the Cup, or most of the points earned to win the Cup, a despite the fact that the points will supposedly increase from the beginning of the season. This means that a player could win the FedEx Cup without winning the season-ending Tour Championship, which is destined to be the Super Bowl of golf. The Super Bowl has a winner, not an augmented winner. Who wants to be doing math on Sunday during the Tour Championship: “Let’s see, Tiger’s eight behind leader Jason Gore, but Tiger had more points because he won one of three playoff events and finished in the top 10 in two others, so that if he can finish in the top 25 of the Tour Championship, where he is now, even if Gore wins by eight shots, Tiger will win the Cup … all he needs is to par his last six holes assuming Gore doesn’t go any lower.” That’s not good. It’s like the stages of the Tour de France. Who wants to see that? I do not.

None of these changes will go into effect until 2007, however. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about it as we move into 2006.

I’m already looking forward to Kapalua for all the usual reasons: it’s nice to vicariously visit Hawaii in the dead of winter, see the sun and sea, surf breaks, and see a small, competitive field. Kapalua also produces prodigious drives and after watching Tiger average over 300 yards on his drive last week, hitting 378 on Sunday, I wonder if he could drive the continent off the top of Kapalua. It’s going to be exciting to see him in 2006, just like Mickelson was in the majors. It will be interesting to follow Singh, to see if he can fix his 2005 woes. Will Ben Crane stop shaking and shaking and step up his game? Whether he does or not, his putting ability in 2006 is worth watching. Gore is also worth watching. and O’Hair. Will Charles Howell III go from being a competitive golfer, always in the mix, to a winner? Chris DiMarco? His value at Augusta was impressive and he can herald a win at one of the 2006 majors. I’ve written him off many times, after many second-place finishes, but he may have turned the corner. And who from the unknowns — who from the mini-tour ensemble, who from the Q School multi-group — will emerge in 2006?

We have two months to solve it.