The numbers game that is part of the FedEx Cup playoffs’ make-up continues with this week’s BMW Championship.
Just 50 players are in action in Colorado before the continued haemorrhaging will reduce the field to just 30 for the Tour Championship where $100 million in bonus pool money will be divvied up, with $25 million to the ultimate winner.
Both Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry are in the field for the BMW – which scales new heights, as it were, in moving to Castle Pines Golf Club in Castle Rock at an altitude 2,000 metres above sea level – and are also guaranteed onward journeys to the following week’s tour finale in Atlanta where players will walk away with wheelbarrows of greenbacks.
Unfortunately for Séamus Power, the Waterford man’s efforts to join McIlroy and Lowry in Colorado came up short. Although Power was the best of the Irish trio at the St Jude Classic in Memphis – he finished tied-10th, with Lowry in tied-50th and McIlroy in tied-68th in the 70-man field – it wasn’t sufficient to move him into the top-50 to progress to the BMW, the penultimate event of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
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Power finished 56th in the FedEx Cup which didn’t enable him to advance nor to secure an automatic place in next year’s PGA Tour signature events.
However, his position gives him a full tour card for next season along with a place in The Players; while he can also move to Plan B in his efforts to yet get his place in two of the signature events, depending on how he plays in the late-year FedEx Cup Fall Series of events.
For McIlroy and Lowry, the performances in Memphis left quite a lot to be desired and, although assured of their places in the Tour Championship, the BMW itself has a prize fund of $20 million but also carries the incentive for them to improve their FedEx Cup standings. McIlroy is currently fifth, with Scottie Scheffler retaining his lead and virtually assured of being number one at East Lake. Lowry is in 11th spot.
Hideki Matsuyama moved up to third in the FedEx Cup behind Scheffler and Xander Schauffele after his win in the St Jude Classic which didn’t come as easily as it had seemed as he turned for home with a five-stroke lead.
There was a rules query for his actions in repairing a pitch mark on the 12th green, potentially in breach of Rule 8-1 which does not allow for a player to improve the lie. The PGA Tour’s chief referee Gary Young took the unusual action of approaching the Japanese player out on the course to discuss the issue.
“I simply had to ask him the question, ‘Hideki, on that hole’, and he did recall the situation that he had walked forward. I asked him what exactly did he do and why did he do it, he just said it was something that he normally does when he has a pitch mark and he felt it was nowhere near his line of play and that was why he stepped it down.
“Following the conversation with him, I felt very comfortable that he felt it was well off his line of play and then we did get supporting video evidence from a different camera angle which clearly showed where he plays his shot and where the pitch mark was. It was a good three feet away.
“Now, some people may say, ‘well, that’s pretty close’. For that short of a shot and one of the best players in the world that is a pretty tight area you’re talking about, so, the committee felt very, very comfortable with the decision,” said Young of not giving Matsuyama any penalty.
However, the situation seemed to throw him off kilter for a time as his lead leaked and vanished only for spectacular back-to-back closing birdies which eased Matsuyama clear again of Schuaffele and Viktor Hovland.
“They just wanted to check and make sure that the rules were kept, which they were. And it really did not affect me the rest of the day. If I was worried that I had done something wrong, that would have rattled me,” claimed Matsuyama, whose win – and elevated points – moved him closer to Scheffler.
On the DP World Tour this week, Tom McKibbin and Gary Hurley are the only Irish players competing in the Danish Golf Championship, while there are seven Irish players – Conor Purcell, Alex Maguire, Jonathan Caldwell, Dermot McElroy, Ronan Mullarney, Conor O’Rourke and Mark Power – in action in the Indoor Golf Group Challenge in Sweden on the Challenge Tour.
The last of five Majors for women this season takes place at St Andrews where the old course will play host to the AIG Women’s Open where Leona Maguire and LET rookie Lauren Walsh are in the field.
Walsh, who missed the cut at the Scottish Open by a shot, earned a debut maiden appearance in a Major through the current season eligibility pathway, which gave five places to players not already exempt for the AIG Women’s Open at the late-July cut-off point on the LET.
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