There are ten million reasons to back the underdog

HARRISON, N.Y. -- Briny Baird has his travel plans booked for the week of the third round of the month-long FedEx Cup playoff series.

Briny Baird: could this be the face of an underdog? (AP)

The dates and hotel are set and the family car is ready to roll, yet his family is loading up on sun screen and panama hats, not Chicago Cubs tickets.

The Baird clan's reservations are for a locale located a zillion cultural miles from Chicago, where the third event in the four-tournament FedEx stretch will be played. Instead, vacation has been booked at La Siesta Resort in the Florida Keys.

"I'd love to break those reservations," he said.

Give the particulars of the playoff structure, guys like Baird could be keys to keeping the FedEx Cup from becoming a siesta-inducing series centering solely on the fat wallets of the game's top stars.

Baird shot a 5-under 66 in the first round of The Barclays at Westchester Country Club and stands three shots off the lead of Rory Sabbatini and one behind fellow foot soldier Brian Gay, who like Baird has never won on the PGA Tour. They have lots in common beyond their Thursday leaderboard status, too.

Baird stands a distant 102nd in FedEx points, while Gay is 76th. With the playoff fields being whittled down in every passing week -- only the top 70 in points will advance to the BMW Championship Sept. 6-9 in Chicago -- these are precisely the guys who could make the cash-stuffed plotlines more palatable.

If Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh are Duke, North Carolina and UCLA in the NCAA basketball playoff bracket, guys like these two are Fairleigh Dickinson and Belmont. They are somewhat akin to the 16th-seeded teams, if not the dudes in the play-in game.

"I think everybody enjoys rooting for the underdog just as much as the favorite," said Gay, 35. "No matter who you are playing against, if you have No. 200 in the world vs. No. 1, I think just as many people would root for the underdog as the No. 1 guy."

Gay, ranked No. 160 in the world, has the opportunity to prove that theory, thanks to the FedEx setup. Underdog isn't just a summer cartoon or a sports cliché anymore.

Cutting to the crux, the whole idea behind the FedEx playoff structure is to make golf relevant after the season's final major, before football overwhelms the sports mindset and the nation's television sets. Wouldn't it be appropriate if a player to whom the money and acclaim are actually meaningful was in the mix?

If Woods wins the $10 million FedEx bonus, he'll use it to pay the diesel bill fuel on his 200-foot mega-yacht. For Baird and Gay, that dollar figure is larger than their collective career earnings totals after a combined 16 years on tour.

The pair has made a 515 starts on tour without a victory, and while they have certainly carved out nice lives for themselves, getting hot for a couple of weeks could put them in an entirely new strata.