Tiger Woods may be elsewhere … again, but eight of the world’s top 10 players will be teeing up in the Nissan Open, which starts today at Riviera Country Club in Pasadena, Calif., today, with another 14 from the top 30 also in the starting lineup. It’s a field that promises some much needed excitement after a rather tame start to a season blunted by tournament fields best described as patchy.

Unfortunately for the tour, hoping its meticulously planned and vigorously marketed FedEx Cup would ensure consistently great turnouts and increase TV ratings during nonmajor championship weeks, the somewhat surprising lack of star power at many early tour stops has failed to create much of a buzz. Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson, and Jim Furyk have all played their share of events, but only at last week’s AT&T National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach did all three appear together.

Part of the problem for the tour is that so many of today’s top players are from overseas and sometimes take a while to return to America after celebrating Christmas and New Year’s at home. Its biggest headache though is, of course, the absence of Woods, the game’s biggest attraction whose nonattendance can have a very negative impact on any tournament that fails to entice him. Just ask Jack Vickers, chairman of the International that last week became the first tournament to succumb to Woods’s all too brief and inflexible playing schedule.

It’s an alarming fact that the most interesting tournament of the year so far, other than the Buick Invitational, which Woods did actually play in (and win), was probably the Dubai Desert Classic, played 5,000 miles away, in which the world no.1 finished third behind Ernie Els and winner Henrik Stenson.

The International’s unfortunate demise and Woods’s infrequent appearances would appear to confirm what some commentators have suspected for a while: that he might have outgrown his sport and no longer have any need for the PGA Tour.

It’s no secret Tiger would rather win the seven majors he needs to surpass Jack Nicklaus’s record than a hundred FedEx Cups. Besides his mother Tida; his wife, Elin, and the baby that’s due in mid-summer, the four majors are Tiger’s raison d’être. He would happily play in them alone and devote the rest of the year to his family and yardwork at the 10-acre Florida estate he purchased in January 2006 if he could. And given the exemptions to the big four he has already earned, and will no doubt continue to earn, it might be that all Tiger needs from Commissioner Tim Finchem and his organization is the odd competitive warmup for the events that really matter. As Jonathan Kaye noted last week: ‘He can do whatever he wants. He’s the man. He owns the world right now.’

Since Finchem denied Woods’s own tournament, the Target World Challenge, a certain spot on the calendar, there has been much speculation the two are at loggerheads, and Finchem appears to be in danger of, if not losing his biggest asset entirely, then certainly depending on him less and less.

But as he remarked last week: Woods makes the tour better, but it’s still strong when he doesn’t play — a point to which the strong assembly of players gathered this week should give some credibility.

Playing for the first time in America this year are South Africans Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, both of whom have enjoyed plenty of good form in various corners of the world since they were last seen in the States. In January, Goosen won the Qatar Masters with a birdie/eagle finish, while Els, who has stated his intention of overtaking Woods at the top of the world rankings within three years, won the South African Open in December and finished second in Dubai two weeks ago.

Also in the field are Sergio Garcia, making his FedEx Cup debut, and world no. 2 Adam Scott, who was runner-up to Rory Sabbatini here last year and won in 2004 after rain washed out the final 36 holes. Also attending are Geoff Ogilvy, Luke Donald, Padraig Harrington, David Toms, Trevor Immelman, Singh, Furyk, and some of the less accomplished players who have nonetheless made impressive starts to the season: John Rollins, Charley Hoffman, Charles Howell, Kevin Sutherland, and Aaron Baddeley.

Grabbing most of the attention, however, once everyone forgets Woods isn’t playing, will be Phil Mickelson, who put a lackluster start to the season behind him with last Sunday’s emphatic victory at the AT&T. Many people were surprised at how quickly he managed to turn his poor form around, but now that he seems to be supremely comfortable with his new driver (fourth in both driving distance and accuracy at Pebble Beach, where he hit an amazing 81.82% of the fairways), he is perhaps in a position to claw his way back from fourth in the world rankings to the second place he is more familiar with.

Mickelson hasn’t played at Riviera since 2001, when he missed the cut, and it’s not necessarily a course that suits the bombers (Corey Pavin, Nick Faldo, Mike Weir, Billy Mayfair, Kirk Triplett, and Len Mattiace, none of whom is long by tour standards, have all won here in the past 15 years), but his short game skills and immaculate putting — first at Pebble Beach with an average 1.596 putts per green in regulation — will come in very useful around the small, well guarded greens.

Mickelson, Els, Singh, Furyk, Goosen, Scott, etc — it’s a great field that will surely provide superb entertainment this weekend. It would just be nice if Tiger was there, too.

tonydear71@comcast.net