Shotgun Start: Tiger re-boot? Dead-week fix? Dustin's case?

This week, the PGA Tour is idle for the first time since January. Off, dark, in a holding pattern. None of which means there are no compelling issues to examine as the FedEx Cup finale approaches in Atlanta, followed by the red-eye flight of 12 Yanks to Wales for the Ryder Cup once the Tour Championship ends. CBSSports.com Senior Writer Steve Elling and Augusta Chronicle columnist and golf writer Scott Michaux attempt to bridge the gap in the schedule between hither and yon.

Bounced from the FedEx series, defending cup champion Tiger Woods has played his last official stroke in PGA Tour competition this season. Identify one positive and one negative he has going for him, or working against him, as he heads into the Ryder Cup and a few overseas or unofficial events before 2011 begins.

ELLING: No doubt, the best decision Woods made was to commit to changing his coach, implementing the resulting swing revisions, and doing it now. He just completed his first winless PGA Tour season and waiting until December to begin making adjustments would have made the lag time even longer. It's a lost season. Why ruin 2011, too, by waiting around to make tweaks? Every time Woods has switched coaches and changed his swing, it's taken a year for the results to take serious root. Some think he switched to a new coach, Sean Foley, mostly to buy himself more time to put the disastrous personal issues aside, but I think he and the Canadian coach will make a nice pair. Foley is brighter than Woods, speaks his mind, and for a relative newcomer to the guru trade, has lots of ideas. As for the most ominous thing hanging over Woods' head as he moves toward the fall and winter, it's got to be his putting. It bears little resemblance to his deadly stroke of old -- and we mean in 2008-09, not 2000. The full swing aside, it's the shortest stroke in golf that poses the biggest hurdle to his comeback.

MICHAUX: The most positive thing for Woods is that by next January he will have settled into his new single life and can proceed without that dark cloud hanging over him. It's impossible to really know just how much all of the personal stress in his life took a toll on his game this year, but we can assume that it was pretty immense. The guy is human after all, even though we tended to believe he had superhuman powers. He just needs to flush all the negativity of the last 10 months from his system and reboot. An offseason of working on his game away from public scrutiny should do wonders for his 2011 outlook. As for the negative, the biggest thing working against his lifetime goals is time. He'll be 35 when next season rolls around, and even for him that's on the downward side when you're trying to accumulate five more major wins to top Nicklaus and nearly 30 more tour victories to break 100. The even bigger problem is that the field of potential major winners has greatly expanded in the last couple of years, as we see so many more breakthroughs. Guys like Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy and a host of other guys are going to be factors that he simply hasn't had to deal with in the first 12 years when he was the dominant force. They don't have that Tiger-induced scar tissue that his peers have struggled with and it's never going to be the same lopsided odds he once enjoyed. That's not saying he won't do everything he set out to do, it's just going to be much harder than any of us used to think.

There's no PGA Tour event being contested this week. Pretend you are a foot shorter, 20 times richer and are the commissioner, Tim Finchem. Where's the best spot in the calendar for the current dark week on the schedule and why?

ELLING: Last week, when even the level-headed players were going ballistic over things like the state of the Cog Hill course, Steve Stricker noted that he hasn't seen many smiles lately. Some top players had teed up at Firestone, the PGA and three straight FedEx Cup events -- that's five starts in six weeks -- and were feeling downright grumpy. The thinking this year was that taking a break before the FedEx finale and Ryder Cup would give the 12 players on the U.S. team some time to decompress. It also didn't hurt in the tour's mind to use the off week to build some suspense for the FedEx finale, the Tour Championship next week in Atlanta, either. With the Presidents Cup moved back later in the schedule next fall, it will be interesting to see if the tour re-jiggers the off week and instead places it before the BMW Championship, which gets hurt by its calendar proximity to the Boston event. The Deutsche Bank event on a Monday night and the BMW pro-am starts about 36 hours later. Personally, I wish the season didn't start until February, or that off weeks were used three or four times over the course of a 10-month season, especially after major championships, when tournaments slotted in those weeks have little chance of landing many top players. But that's my little private Utopia. I sure wouldn't mind if the FedEx Series consisted of three tournaments, not four.

MICHAUX: I'll be honest, I don't really care if there ever is a "dark" week. Obviously they need to build in some off weeks into this playoff thingy to make it manageable, but that doesn't mean there needs to be a vacancy on the schedule. Take one of those Fall Series events and fill the void on the schedule. A significant portion of the membership endures a forced extended layoff -- the players who don't qualify for the five-week-long FedEx Series -- so instead of making them suffer through a dark month they ought to get them back into action as soon as possible. In fact, they should start that Fall Series as soon they start trimming fields in the playoffs. Run them opposite and end the season at one universal time. Those events are already deeply discounted and shown only on the Golf Channel. Stop pretending that anyone is paying attention in the middle of football season and get it over with so that everybody can have the same extended offseason that affords them opportunities to take a break or play overseas if the muse strikes. Those top-30 and top-70 guys aren't playing in those fall events anyway, so create a finite timetable for the golf season that ends with the Ryder and Presidents Cups.

You both personally witnessed his triumphs or tragedies on the golf course this summer. What's the short-term future of Dustin Johnson?

ELLING: Short-term? Might be the only time "short" and the ball-belting Johnson are linked in the same sentence. There's not much doubt that he has as much upside as anybody in the game, and at age 26, it's downright exciting to see a guy blossom -- or, alternately, wilt -- right in front of our eyes. He is hardly a finished product, though he sure played like one Sunday to ice the BMW Championship. While everybody was raving about the clutch drives he delivered down the stretch to win, the most important shot in crunch time was the 94-yard wedge shot he hit from the 17th fairway. He entered the week ranked an embarrassing 188th on tour from between 75-100 yards based on the final proximity of the ball to the flag and stiffed it to 30 inches for what ultimately proved to be the title-clinching birdie. He and new swing coach Butch Harmon have been emphasizing his finesse shots, because like many younger players, it's not particularly an asset at this point. Strength is his strength, if you will. It's amazing how Johnson has gone from a player not always mentioned in the Young Guns discussion to being at the fore of the pack, all in eight months. Like with Rory McIlroy, there's plenty more to come. Guess the Brits won't be calling him "Dustbin" Johnson for long.

MICHAUX: What do you consider "short-term?" Is next April short enough? Right now I will state that Dustin is one of the top five favorites to win the 2011 Masters. He's made two straight cuts at Augusta and is just starting to get a feel for the course after three starts. With his combination of power and touch, he is made to be a green-jacket contender. With the confidence he's gained from posting four top-14 finishes in his last five major starts, Johnson is just now establishing himself as a legitimate force to be reckoned with. He has a gift for being able to avoid getting scarred by disappointment, which is a trait that would serve any golfer well. Jack and Tiger certainly had that going for them. Phil has shown the ability to rise off the mat from repeated setbacks. Given Johnson's resume of success going back to his amateur days as a Walker Cupper, you have to wonder why anyone discounted his prospects in the first place. His long-term prognosis should be considered limitless as well. Before this summer most fans and media tended to believe Johnson lacked charisma. But he has changed that perception with his ability to handle potentially crushing setbacks gracefully and move forward successfully. He's got the look with those long sideburns and lumbering gait. But the thing people should admire most is the way he plays the game fast and fearlessly. I wish there were a hundred more guys like him.