ATLANTA - There were questions. Lots of questions. There were concerns. Lots of concerns. And there were predictions of doom. Lots of predictions of doom. Everybody, it seems, had a problem with the proposed 2007-10 PGA Tour schedule.

The only thing is, during Wednesday's announcement at the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club, all we got was confirmation of the worst-kept secret in golf: For 2007-10, there will be something called a "championship series" of four mega events that would involve the top 144 names off a season-long points list sponsored by FedEx. Reportedly $10 million will go to the winner of the FedEx Cup, another $20 million or so will be divided among the next 29 names on the list, and tournaments in New York, Boston, Chicago, and various other Midwest ports will be jam-packed with stars as a lead-up to the Tour Championship, which would become to the PGA Tour what the World Series is to baseball, the Super Bowl to football, the World Cup to soccer.

OK, there's some embellishment there, but PGA commissioner Tim Finchem for years has wanted to spice up the Tour Championship and now's the time to do it. The rich TV contract expires at the end of the 2006 season and negotiations are underway for the 2007-10 renewal. But you don't bring the same, old stale product to market; instead, you try and throw in a new wrinkle or two, jazz it up, put on a fresh coat of paint. That's what Finchem is doing, which is nothing other sports executives haven't been doing for years. Baseball added another tier of playoffs and the divisional series are more times than not better TV than the World Series. The NFL went from 14 to 16 games, tossed in a bye week, and split into four divisions in each conference to more easily pack on playoff games, which in turn has led to greater excitement. The NBA went to a dress code and ... well, let's wish them well on that one and get back to Finchem's plan.

It deserves time to take shape, because here's a hunch that it might just work.

Granted, in the aftermath of Finchem's press conference, the questions were many and the answers too few, but that situation can certainly be worked out long before the plan has to be implemented. The biggest hurdle is how players will accumulate points during the regular season and it would be a mistake to assign more points to a lower-tier event as an enticement to get players to where they wouldn't normally play, a fear that some players have talked about.

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Naturally, there's concern that the six or seven PGA Tour events after the Tour Championship would be rendered meaningless. Other fears were mentioned — that it leaves open the possibility of having a wild schedule, take some of the steam out of the Ryder Cup and President Cup, that it could do a number on late-season European PGA Tour events, that with so many events in a row in August and September players will probably thin out their schedules earlier in the year.

Valid concerns, all of them, but give it some time and they can be worked out.

As for the grumbling that all of this is geared toward appeasing the game's superstars — the so-called "1 percent" that some critics have talked about — guess what? That's not only a sound plan, it's the way it should be. The superstars and the high-profile personalities are the guys who drive the PGA Tour, who get people in front of their TVs and out to the golf course. It's imperative that Finchem get as many of these players assembled into the same field as often as possible and there's good reason to think that his "championship series" will do just that.

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