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NORTON - In just a few days, the attention of the entire American sporting world may be focused, not on Boston's Fenway Park or Foxboro's Gillette Stadium, but on a chunk of land off Route 140 in Norton that until a few years ago was dense woodlands.

The Tournament Players Club of Boston - for years a forest known as the Great Woods until it debuted as a golf course five years ago - will open its gates to the world's best golfers this week as Norton plays host to the second round of the FedEx Cup, the four-tournament playoff the PGA Tour hopes will crown a champion and spur, as its slogan and leaders say, "a new era in golf."

Then again, sports fans may ignore golf in favor of baseball pennant races, including one involving the Boston Red Sox, still New England's dominant sports franchise. Or fans may be too focused on the kickoff of the football season, particularly on the National Football League, easily America's biggest athletic league, and one of its premier teams, the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.

Excitement, uncertainty and confusion all reign as the Deutsche Bank Championship, now in its fifth season at the PGA Tour-owned golf course, tees off this week with practice rounds on Tuesday through Thursday and competition on Friday through next Monday, Labor Day.

Certainly, the PGA Tour - which overhauled a schedule that had been the same for more than 20 years, upsetting several tournament sponsors, and invested millions of dollars and much of its future on the FedEx Cup - is excited. "I wonder if the members of the Green Bay Packers when they won the very first Super Bowl in 1967 ... realized their place in history," said Ric Clarson, senior vice president of brand marketing for the PGA Tour, during a recent visit to Norton. "The fact of the matter is they knew it was a big game and an important game, but they didn't realize that the way that New England's fans realized it when the Patriots won the Super Bowl.

"Thus we embark on a new era in golf called the FedExCup."

Tiger Woods, the world's top-rated golfer and perhaps its most famous athlete, said players are more excited than ever to come to Norton this year.

"It's a fantastic forum for the event," Woods, whose Tiger Woods Foundation will continue to be the primary charity beneficiary of the Deutsche Bank Championship, said via conference call at a recent media event at the TPC Boston. "It's an event with superb galleries. All the players who have played there have thoroughly enjoyed their experience in the event. I think by making it a playoff event, it's certainly going to add to that this year because there will be even more at stake."

Also excited is Deutsche Bank Americas, which hiked its purse for this week's tourney from $5.5 million to $7 million - ensuring the winner a check for $1.26 million - in order to become eligible to be a playoff tournament.

"We're very excited to be part of the playoff," said Seth Waugh, CEO of the financial firm. "... Everybody wants to be the first guy to win the (FedEx) Cup. So we are very excited to be part of a mini-major, if you will."

And so is FedEx, which is signed through 2012 at a reported $40 million, to be the sponsor of the playoffs, patterned after NASCAR's Nextel Cup, with points accumulated during the regular season leading to a short series of competitions where one man is crowned.

But uncertainty is also in the air.

For one thing, this sort of thing has been tried before.

The PGA Tour, in 1986, launched the Vantage Championship, a blockbuster end to the season after a season-long points competition. The Vantage, which featured a bonus worth five times the typical first-place check, evolved into the Tour Championship, which has generated limited interest from the sporting public. "The reason other sports find it easy to define their seasons is because it's always about the end," Finchem told The Associated Press when he first started to put together the pieces of the FedEx Cup. "Not only do we have a weak ending, it's overshadowed by spikes of interest you have from big tournaments. We need a culminating event that's special and that you have to play hard to get into."

Also, there is no guarantee that the players will be committed to the playoffs. Many of the world's top golfers often play little, if at all, after the early August PGA Championship, the last of the sport's four major championships.

The PGA Tour - which represents touring golfers and is separate from the PGA, which represents teaching pros - is asking players to commit to four straight weeks of playoffs. Then, in late September each year, two dozen of the world's top golfers will be competing in either the Ryder Cup or the Presidents Cup, tournaments pitting the United States against the world, which draw high television ratings.

That stretch - playing virtually every week for two months - is considered particularly grueling for pros who know that one misstep - a single bad shot - can cost them not only thousands of dollars, but their reputations.

In fact, Woods cited exhaustion for deciding against playing this weekend in The Barclays outside of New York City, the playoffs' first tournament. He could afford to do that because he is the FedEx Cup point leader and can still claim the title with a strong showing in the three remaining tournaments.

Many in the golf world had also thought that Phil Mickelson, Woods' leading challenger in both accomplishment and popularity, would not play in all four - if any - of the FedEx Cup events because he seldom plays after the PGA Championship. However, Mickelson has said a left wrist injury prevented him from competing for much of the summer so he is eager to take part in the entire end-of-the-season playoffs.

Mickelson will be playing for the first time in Norton, as will some of golf's other top names - Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Retief Goosen. They will be joined by other top-ranked pros, including Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk and Adam Scott. In fact, all of the top 15 players in the FedEx Cup standings are committed to playing in the Deutsche Bank Championship, ensuring by far its best field ever.

"We're going to get 120 or 118 of the top 120 (golfers)," Waugh said. "We're going to have an incredible field, and we are really excited about that."

But even if the top players commit to the playoffs, there is no guarantee that the sporting public will. Besides the competition with baseball and football, golf will also be up against a busy time of year, with children going back to school and outdoor activities abounding for much of the country.

Although Woods' presence always boosts tournaments' TV ratings, some question whether the non-golfing public will tune in or whether the sporting world is ready to accept four more big tournaments besides the four majors (the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA). Clarson said TV ratings will be watched closely, and he and most players acknowledge that they expect the playoffs to change and evolve.

Adding to the uncertainty is confusion. The regular season involved an elaborate point system in which players accumulated points based on their finish, with weighting toward the traditional major tournaments.

With the regular season now over, the points are reset, with Woods getting 100,000, second-place finisher Singh getting 99,000 down to 84,700 for the 144st player. Players will receive 9,000 points for winning a playoff tournament - 10,300 for the Tour Championship - with decreasing amounts for the runners-up.

The 144-player field at the Barclays Classic will be trimmed to 120 for the Deutsche Bank Championship, then to 70 the following week, the BMW Championship in Chicago, and to 30 at the Tour Championship.

But it's not only mathematically possible to not play in all events and win the $10 million first prize, as Woods is attempting to do, but it's also possible to clinch the crown before the final tournament. And even the PGA Tour's number crunching shows that only the top 15 golfers have a realistic chance at the top prize.

The players themselves were shocked to find out recently that the $10 million prize will not be given to them in cash. Instead, it is a $10 million annuity to be paid upon their retirement.

And if you think golf is over for the year when the Tour Championship concludes on Sept. 16, think again. The season, which began in Hawaii in early January, will continue into November with several smaller tournaments in which lesser players are expected to compete for smaller purses and to win exemptions for 2008 tourneys.

In any case, Norton will be at the center of attention when the first competitive round tees off about 7 a.m. on Friday.

"Some of the greatest moments in sports come from playoffs. Some of the greatest moments in golf have happened right here at the Deutsche Bank," Clarson said, referring to a pair of head-to-head matches in 2004 and 2006 between Woods and Singh, two of the premier players of the past decade. "And when you combine those two ingredients, we think we're in for a great new era in golf."

MIKE KIRBY can be reached at 508-236-0344 or at mkirby@thesunchronicle.com.