It’s a four-event playoff that whittles down the fields beginning with The Barclays in the NY (125 players) this week, continuing with the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston (100 players) and the BMW Championship in Indianapolis (70 players) and culminates with the Tour Championship in Atlanta Sept. 22-25 with the top 30 players.
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Si Woo Kim put on an impressive showing last week to take him his first PGA Tour victory at the Wyndham.
Rory McIlroy has had a bit of a miserable year so far. And while the odds are against some of the players down on the list, someone on the tour is going to be much richer in a few weeks.
That’s because a lot of them didn’t go to the Olympics.
The Barclays will be the final event where USA players can control their own destiny by moving into the top 8 of the Ryder Cup standings on points without needing a captain’s pick from US captain Davis Love III.
Round 2 (Deutsche Bank Championship): The top 100 will compete in the second week at TPC Boston. But given the choice, Spieth stated that he’d rather be a part of a winning Ryder Cup team the following week at Hazeltine than hoist a second straight FedEx Cup trophy. The top 70 play a no-cut event at the BMW Championship (usually around Chicago), and the top-30 play the TOUR Championship after a week off. Snedeker is followed by Zach Johnson, who leads Patrick Reed at No. 8 by $157,602. The Nike PGA Tour van is scheduled to be at events only through the end of this season, which concludes at the Tour Championship in late September.
Johnson finished third at the 2012 Barclays at Bethpage Black. That group includes Brandt Snedeker, Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler and bronze medal victor Matt Kuchar. As the victor of the CareerBuilder Challenge in a playoff over David Lingmerth, Dufner zoomed up the FedEx Cup points list. Shawn Stefani (66), who began the week at No. 133, did enough to move into the top 125 at No. 123. He would have to finish no worse than a two-way tie for fourth. It also hosted the U.S. Open in 2002 (Tiger Woods) and 2009 (Lucas Glover). It would have be disappointing to play Greensboro (last week) and have the season end, if that made sense, and not get in any playoff events and then wait for the fall to come around.
But while it doesn’t carry the cache or prestige of the game’s established Big Four, there is one significant golf title no Australian has yet captured: the lucrative FedEx Cup.
Even if Speith recaptures some of last season’s momentum and repeats as the Tour Championship victor and claims a second FedEx Cup, it won’t be an exact repeat at East Lake. “Obviously the two missed cuts at the majors were very disappointing, especially the way I missed the cuts”.
For Summerhays, who had a breakout season on the PGA Tour in 2016 and will play in his first Masters next April, it’s a good spot to be in.
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Major champions typically get the vote from the players, but there are four of them this year Danny Willett, Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson and Jimmy Walker.
