Now, the FedEx Cup can get serious. While the biggest cat of them all stayed away from the first tournament - the Barclays Classic, won on Sunday by Steve Stricker, who thus ended a six-year winless drought - the return of Tiger Woods to the fray for this week's Deutsche Bank Championship, the second of four tournaments in the US Tour's play-off series, adds an entirely new dimension to the exercise.

Woods chose to take a fortnight's break from competition after his US PGA title win, rather than jumping straight back into competition.

"I'm looking forward to playing again," he said in a statement issued by his management ahead of reappearing for this week's €5-million tournament in Boston. "I needed a short break to rest and spend time with my family and I am ready to go."

Today, Woods will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to start a day that will see him launch the EA Sports Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 video game, before undertaking media commitments that include appearances on MTV, the Golf Channel and ESPN.

Despite his absence from the first of the FedEx Cup tournaments, Woods is still strongly placed to collect the 7.35-million pension fund awarded to whoever tops the rankings after the Tour Championship in three weeks' time. His decision not to play the Barclays saw him slip from first to fourth in the standings, behind Stricker. But Woods intends to play all three remaining tournaments, this week's Deutsche Bank, next week's BMW Championship in Cog Hill and, finally, the Tour Championship in Atlanta, by which stage the field will be reduced to the top 30 players in the standings.

Woods is scheduled to play alongside Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh for the first two rounds of the Deutsche Bank, which starts on Friday.

Pádraig Harrington, meanwhile, will play alongside Justin Rose and Jerry Kelly for the opening two rounds as the British Open champion - who slipped two places, from 21st to 23rd, in the standings after the Barclays - continues his US campaign.

Harrington, now ranked seventh in the world after Stricker's victory moved him up nine places from 14th to a career-high fifth, intends to remain on in the States to take in all of the FedEx Cup tournaments (assuming he qualifies for the Tour Championship), before returning to Europe for an intensive run that will start with the Seve Trophy at The Heritage outside Portlaoise and take in the Alfred Dunhill Links in Scotland and the HSBC World Matchplay in Wentworth as he bids to consolidate his position at the top of the European Tour Order of Merit. He will then recross the Atlantic for the Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda.

Nobody was more aware of Woods's intended return to tournament play for the Deutsche Bank than Stricker, whose finishing 69 for 268 in the Barclays at Westchester gave him a two-shot winning margin over KJ Choi of Korea.

"Everything that comes after (the win) is icing on the cake," said Stricker, adding, "I'm in a great position now.

"There's still a long ways to go (in the FedEx race), and we all know who is coming back next week. I've just got to keep focused and keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully get myself some more opportunities in the next three (tournaments)."

Stricker, who had assumed the 54-hole lead only to be overtaken by Choi on the back nine, birdied four of the last five holes to regain the lead, giving him a first tournament win since his 2001 WGC-Accenture Matchplay win in Australia and the first in the United States since the 1996 Motorola Western Open. It also put the "icing on the cake" on a season that had seen him record two seconds, a tie for fourth, another for fifth and a tie for eighth at the British Open.

The win marked a real turnaround for Stricker, who was forced to seek sponsors' invitations when he lost his card in 2005 and had to go back to tour school before being named as "comeback player" of the year in 2006, where he contended in the US Open at Winged Foot, eventually finishing sixth.

"I've worked," he said. "I mean, every player out here wants to do this, wants to win. That's what we are all out here to do. You don't get in position that many times, and when you do, it's tough to pull it off."

Of his decision to change his swing when he was unable to make a cut for love or money, Stricker remarked, "They were little things, not a lot of huge things . . . a lot of little things that I wanted to take care of and kind of address.

"And it kind of filtered down into my mental outlook, too. They kind of go hand and hand, and I wasn't giving myself the benefit of the doubt a lot of times. I was not thinking very positively before I even got up to hit a shot.

"So I tried to change all of those things, and slowly, you know, at the start of that 2006 season, and for me it seems like if I can get on a roll and get some confidence, I become a different player. I felt like once things got rolling, I could run with that. I still am (running)."