Last modified: Thursday, June 19, 2008 2:21 AM EDT Tiger Woods grimaces after teeing off during the fourth round of the US Open championship earlier this week. KIRBY: Without Tiger, is tourney still a hit? Is the Deutsche Bank Championship a wildly popular sporting event? Or is Tiger Woods such a wildly popular athlete that he alone has made the PGA Tour event that invades Norton each Labor Day weekend such a success? We may know the answer to those questions in about 11 weeks. By that time, the sixth Deutsche Bank Championship will be in the books, and we may be able to determine if New England golf fans are as willing to take the trip down Interstate 495 to the Tournament Players Club of Boston for this area's only visit by the PGA Tour as they have been during the tourney's first five years. The catch, of course, is that Woods announced Wednesday that he would undergo knee surgery that would end his season. DBC Director Eric Baldwin said he wished Woods a speedy recovery and looked forward to having him back next year. "We're obviously disappointed that Tiger won't be able to join us for the Deutsche Bank Championship, but we're still very excited about this year's Championship because we will have a tremendously strong field with defending champion Phil Mickelson and the rest of the top 120 players on the PGA TOUR competing in a Playoffs event," Baldwin said. He added: "Ticket sales during our recently completed two-week sales window were very strong, and we think the results show just how much local interest there is in what has become New England's Labor Day sports tradition. That being said, there are still a limited number of tickets remaining for the Championship, and we are expecting another sellout." But one PGA Tour veteran acknowledged that the sport suffered a major blow to its 2008 season. "Tiger is our tour," Kenny Perry told the Associated Press. "When you lose your star player, it definitely hurts." There's little doubt that the Deutsche Bank Championship owes much of its success - sellouts or close to it for every round, more than $10 million in charitable donations, including to the towns of Norton and Mansfield and to the YMCAs in Attleboro and North Attleboro, and elevation to a PGA Tour playoff event - to Tiger Woods. In fact, many around here have called the Deutsche Bank Championship the "Tiger Tourney" since its inception in 2003. Woods and Deutsche Bank have long been partners; he endorses the financial institution while playing in its European Tour event. When Deutsche Bank decided to sponsor a PGA Tour event in America and would do it in the Boston market, which had been without a major golf tourney, it smartly partnered with Woods, making the Tiger Woods Foundation the chief charity beneficiary for the event. The move virtually guaranteed that Woods - by far America's top-paid athlete and certainly one of the world's most recognizable figures - would visit Norton annually. Anyone who has attended the Deutsche Bank Championship knows that Tiger is the primary draw. Even on the rare occasions when he has not played well there - Woods has won the tournament once and finished second twice - other golfers' galleries are dwarfed by his. But the Deutsche Bank Championship got a huge lift last year when the PGA Tour introduced the FedEx Cup, a four-tourney playoff designed to attract the world's top golfers with a $10 million first prize while focusing attention on the sport as it faces competition from baseball and football. The tournament in Norton was chosen as the second round of the playoffs and featured a thrilling duel between Woods and Mickelson, the world's second-ranked golfer. In fact, many golf journalists ranked the 2007 Deutsche Bank Championship as the year's best, thanks to Mickelson's vanquishing of the seemingly unbeatable Woods. But whether the tournament's status will be enough to make it a top fan attraction is still unclear. Mickelson is a star in his own right, and last year's FedEx Cup produced some dark horse performers, such as Steve Stricker and K.J. Choi. But these golfers are likely to excite only hard-core golfers, not the casual fans who have also been drawn by Tiger's star power to the TPC Boston in recent years. The timing of Woods' announcement could not have come at a worse time for the Deutsche Bank Championship, falling three days after the tournament closed a two-week ticket-selling period. Marketing for those tickets featured Woods prominently. Still, the tournament has overcome adversity in the past, including reviews for the course which were so mediocre that the PGA Tour financed a redesign prior to last year's FedEx Cup. In 11 weeks, we may know if the tourney can survive a bum knee to its star attraction. MIKE KIRBY has covered the Deutsche Bank Championship since its inception. He can be reached at 508-236-0344 or at mkirby@thesunchronicle.com.