The end of the season is now in sight. With the PGA Tour Fall Series underway in Las Vegas, and the European Tour’s Race to Dubai coming to an end, you could be forgiven into thinking that there’s little to whet your golfing appetite with. However, you would be mistaken. If you were to look at a more mature vintage of golfer, you would see there is still a lot to play for.

With just three events remaining, on the Champions Tour schedule, before the season ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship, attention, particularly amongst those in contention, is turning to who will lift the coveted Charles Schwab Cup.

For those who may not fully be aware of the system; the Charles Schwab Cup is, in some respects, the Champions Tour’s equivalent of the FedEx Cup. Although, the Charles Schwab, correctly, puts a greater emphasis on performance in the five major championships, and is a much better indicator for when it comes to identifying the best player of that season.

As the Tour arrives in North Carolina, for the SAS Championship, the race, for the 2012 Charles Schwab, remains wide open, and, it could, possibly, be blown wide open by the results this week, at Prestonwood Country Club.

Tom Lehman is the overall leader coming into this week. However, he isn’t actually in the field. It does seem a curious decision, considering that, although, the 1996 Open champion has led the way since the 13th week of the season, he remains just 246 points ahead of Bernhard Langer.

Now, before your eyes glaze over, wondering what these points are all about. Lets quickly answer a defining question. How are these points actually calculated? Well, points are awarded to the top-10 finishes, and ties, in all official tournaments. That makes sense, but what does a single point represent? Let me tell you, soon to be enlightened one. These points are based on the prize-money distributed, at events, with every $1,000 representing one Charles Schwab Cup Point. To put that into practice, if you finished seventh, and earned $50,000, you would gain 50 Points. In other words, Langer is $246,000 behind Lehman in the race.

So what is the relevance for this at Prestonwood? Well, to put it simply, a win for Langer at the SAS would take him into the leading position in the race. A position he hasn’t held since the 11th week of the season, when he finished second to, coincidentally, Tom Lehman at the Regions Tradition. As mentioned earlier, the leader isn’t in the field, so this represents a massive opportunity for the two-time Masters champion, to, at very least, make up some ground.

Langer is coming into Prestonwood in a very positive frame of mind, having played a cheerleading role at the Ryder Cup. In fact, on Saturday night, at Medinah, Langer spoke at length with Martin Kaymer, who had sat out on the two sessions that day, in order to motivate him going into the Singles. As it happens, it was, of course, the younger German who sunk the defining putt that retained the Ryder Cup for Europe.

So what are his chances? He has played in this event on three occasions, with his best finish coming in 2010 with a tie for fourth. That was, incidentally, the season in which he won the Charles Schwab Cup, and every other major award available.

However, Langer isn’t the only European name who has Lehman looking nervously over his shoulder at. Roger Chapman, the Senior PGA and US Senior Open champion, is also still very much in contention, and, a strong performance at the SAS, would provide him with a fantastic opportunity to cap off, what has been a remarkable and life-changing season, with its end emerging ever closer.

Last week, Tom Lehman, the 2006 Captain, watched on as the U.S. Ryder Cup team was overwhelmed by the most remarkable comeback in the 85-year history of that event. Just a few days later, he can sit back and watch, once again, as more Europeans seek to begin the undertaking, of, what would be, another dramatic comeback, and snatch the Charles Schwab Cup, and with it, the $1 Million bonus, out of his hands.