The Barclays, won a year ago by Australian Day, is the first of four lucrative FedExCup events that conclude the 2015-16 schedule with a playoff bonus of $10 million going to the overall champion. But those chances took a big hit on Thursday. They were among the top four who chose not to go.
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The 28-year-old hasn’t played since his spectacular runner-up finish at the PGA Championship at Baltusrol but in a season which has seen him post three victories and nine top 10’s in 16 starts, he will be among the favourites this week.
Neither he nor fellow-Queenslander Adam Scott has played since the PGA Championship at the end of July, both skipping the Olympic Games.
That’s because majority didn’t go to the Olympics. Despite not playing since finished second at the US PGA Championship, the Australian tops the FedEx Cup standings with 2,735 points, 34 clear of Johnson.
Tour members earn points based on their results in all events they feature in, with an emphasis on those finishing higher up the leaderboard.
The 2016 Barclays tees off on Thursday morning. Total bonuses for the top 30 are $US35 million. That’s still a long way off. The Ryder Cup in on the horizon. While a field that features so many stars makes it somewhat hard to bet on sleepers, it also means that you can find middle-to-upper tier players with tremendous value when it comes to the odds.
As for Rickie Fowler?
Brian Stuard (76th): The victor of the rain-shortened Zurich Classic of New Orleans in May, Stuard is in the FedEx Cup playoffs for the first time since 2013-14 when he finished 51st. Points are quadrupled for the next three weeks, instead of being five times their normal value in previous years. Then comes the BMW Championship before a one-week break ahead of the Tour Championship.
No matter how much Spieth tries to convince us he has moved past the quadruple-bogey 7 at the 12th hole in the final round of the Masters, the rest of the world won’t until he wins another major, or something similar like the FedEx Cup.
Earlier this summer, he also cited a knee injury when withdrawing from the U.S. Open. It hosted another U.S. Open in 2009, when Lucas Glover won in a rain-delayed finish.
The victor receives 2,000 FedEx Cup points. “And it’s Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, and it’s soft”. Playoff golf can only mean one thing: playoff mustaches. He missed the cut and dropped out of the top 125, as did Whee Kim.
Among those outside the top 100 are Keegan Bradley at No. 106.
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The 2012 edition of the FedEx Cup’s second-to-last event drew wide praise from the Tour. In that timeframe, there have been a few other epic performances by some of the best golfers in the world, as the current top two in the Official World Golf Rankings, Jason Day (2015) and Dustin Johnson (2011), tied Bob Gilder (1982) and Johnny Miller (1974) with the lowest scores to par (-19) at this event in their respective victories.
