The climax of the FedEx Cup playoffs, arguably one of the game’s toughest mettle-testers, and inarguably the most lucrative gets underway Thursday.  Three events have whittled the top 125 golfers down to the 30 who will arrive at Atlanta’s East Lake for the TOUR Championship for a chance at a handsome sterling silver Tiffany & Co.-designed chalice and a handsomer eight-figure bonus: $9 million up front with another million tucked into a player’s tax-deferred retirement account for safekeeping.  There’s a bevy of first-timers in the field (nearly 30% of the field) raring for glory and a mega bank account boost-we focus in on the three golfers making their TOUR Championship debut that have a shot at it.

Chris Kirk   “Mr. Composure”

This cool customer who keeps his emotions dialed down to one whether he’s holing a twenty-foot birdy or just shanked a shot into the drink.   A native Atlantan who played college golf in Georgia, Kirk is going to have a very supportive gallery in East Lake. Leading the fray heading into the final shindig, he controls his own destiny still odds makers aren’t as convinced with his ability to not collapse under the pressure as his fans with some bookmakers giving him a 55-1 shot.

The grip it & rip it proponent’s twang off the tee, supersized gut and garish Loudmouth threads tend to draw the lion’s share of John Daly headlines these days but lately his music is doing the talking.

JD’s ‘I Hit it Hard’ a rock inflected track Daly sings about not holding back, living large and hitting long.  The ditty which feels a lot life Blake Shelton meets Bon Jovi after downing a couple sweet tea & lemonade vodka cocktails scored an A+ with  country music life’s @dayneshuda and is currently heating up the dial.   Though even Shuda is bemused why the three-year-old song is getting airplay now : “The fact that this song is getting played on SiriusXM now caught me off guard. The album that John put out came out back in 2010.”

The Highway, the satellite radio broadcaster’s spot for songs about trucks, smoking hot farmer’s daughters in cut-off daisy dukes and straight up country hits by chart toppers has been playing Daly’s missive to his throw caution to the wind never lay up golf game. 

While odds are always high that a player whose caddie is toting around a bag emblazoned with the logo of Canada’s biggest bank will top the leaderboard (the RBC gang is pretty star studded including Furyk, Kuchar, Mahan, Els and many others), the same can’t be said of a passport holder ending a drought a decade older than the Toronto Maple Leafs’ dry patch since there are only a few contenders in the mix—but it was really close this time.

Weyburn, Saskatchewan’s Graham DeLaet led the PGA in total driving last year, a stat derived by combining a player’s rank off the tee in distance and accuracy. Along with his clubs, here’s what the first Canadian to crack a Presidents Cup team since Mike Weir totes to tournaments. An abbreviated version of my story ran in CAA Magazine.