SteveElling

NORTON, Mass. -- This is most definitely not the intended consequence of the PGA Tour's revamped FedEx Cup playoff points system.

Well, unless they were looking for defections among the defects, that is.

With it becoming increassingly obvious that the sweeping points overhaul has placed too much emphasis on the performances of players in the four-event playoff series and devalued the importance of play in the regular season, Phil Mickelson dropped a bomb Thursday at the Deutsche Bank Championship that probably had a few officers at tour headquarters reaching for aspirin, if not hankies.

Those aren't raindrops from the latest tropical storm falling in Ponte Vedra Beach, those are teardrops of sheer fright. After a handful of prominent players had expressed the opinion Thursday that the new FedEx points system had overreached, Mickelson offered an entirely unanticipated answer.

"I think that the intent was to have more turnover, and certainly it has done that," he said. "I don't feel as though the season, the regular season, has anywhere near the same impact that it had, and so that could be a good thing because now we don't have to play as many events if we don't want to."

Uh-oh.

"Positioning ourselves for the FedEx Cup is really not important because the last‑place guy, if he wins, vaults into first," he said. "So that could be kind of cool, too."

For Lefty, perhaps. Yet having one of the tiny handful of the tour's marketable stars staying at home isn't cool if you are a title sponsor paying $6 million for naming rights and desperately trying to attract key players.

Mickelson's statement runs anathema to the whole FedEx foundation and probably ensures that yet another points overhaul will take place this winter, too.  For those with short memories, or who instinctively tune out the bombast from the tour propaganda machine, the entire promotional thrust for the inaugural FedEx Cup last year was that the series would prompt the best players to compete head-to-head more frequently than ever before at this point in the season.

In fact, the tour circulated data to prove that the series had been a success in that regard. With Mickelson raising the possibility that his frequent middle-tier haunts like the Byron Nelson, Colonial or Houston might be skipped, rest assured that season three of the FedEx Cup will produce yet another set of rules and regs.

The FedEx refried beans will become three-fried beans -- and not just because this year's point system is overcooked.

Mickelson has played in 18 events entering the event tis week at TPC Boston, which is precisely the average number of starts for the active players in the top 10 of the current world rankings, and projects to a total of 21 tournaments after the four-event FedEx series finishes Sept. 28 in Atlanta.

If more FedEx series points means the possibility of seeing less of Mickelson in the regular season, that's a design scenario that should be dynamited, not tweaked, going forward.