2021 Wyndham Championship: Rickie Fowler among stars facing high stakes ahead of FedEx Cup Playoffs
Written by Luck Wilson on August 11, 2021
At normal golf tournaments, most of the attention goes to what happens at the top, but the Wyndaham Championship is not a normal golf tournament. There will be eyes on what takes place up and down the board.
Plenty of big-time golfers are either just inside or just outside the top 125 in the current FedEx Cup standings. This is significant for a number of reasons. Theoretically, if you finish outside the top 125 in a given season, you lose your PGA Tour card for the following season. However, there are alternative ways to keep a card, and most of the stars have already done so.
For example, Rickie Fowler is currently ranked No. 130 in the FedEx Cup standings. He needs to finish 21st or better this week to get into the top 125 and make the playoffs, which start next week with The Northern Trust. However, even if Fowler misses his first FedEx Cup Playoffs ever (he’s played in every one since 2010), he is not in danger of losing his PGA Tour card. His 2015 Players Championship win exempts him through the end of the 2022-23 PGA Tour season.
This is true of Justin Rose (WGC win exemption thru 2023-24) and Adam Scott (Genesis win exemption thru 2023-24), as well. So while there is real playoff money and OWGR points at stake, there is not a question of where these golfers will be playing when the new season starts in September.
That’s not the case for everyone, though. If Patrick Rodgers (currently No. 123 in the FedEx Cup), Bo Hoag (125), Scott Piercy (126) or Camilo Villegas (129) fails to either stay inside or play their way inside the top 125, then the next step for them is the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, which starts next week with the Albertsons Boise Open. If they finish in the top 25 over the course of that three-event stretch, they regain their PGA Tour cards. If not, it’s off to the Korn Ferry Tour for the majority of the 2021-22 season.
PGA Tour
There are other interesting cases and scenarios. When I see Nate Lashley (127) and Michael Thompson (128) outside the top 125, I think not of their PGA Tour cards, which are secure after recent wins, but rather the earnings potential they miss out on by missing out on the playoffs. Combined, they have made about the same as first prize in the Tour Championship ($15 million), which culminates with the Tour Championship at East Lake. There is another $45 million in bonus funds to be distributed outside of that $15 million, and if they miss the playoffs, they miss out on most of it (Nos. 126-150 do get $70,000 as a parting gift).
The last — and maybe most intriguing — situation is Tommy Fleetwood. He will lose his card if he doesn’t finish 11th or better this week, but his Official World Golf Ranking is so high that he will still get into major championships and WGC event while still retaining status on the European Tour. His problem will be more of a logistical one than anything else. He will no longer have full control over his schedule.
The other layer here is that there was no mechanism last year for relegation to the Korn Ferry Tour or promotion to the PGA Tour. The fallout from this is that you have players on the Korn Ferry Tour that have been playing at a PGA Tour level for two years and will finally get their opportunity to prove it in the fall. The other interesting note here is that players from No. 126-200 in either the 2019-20 or 2020-21 PGA Tour season are eligible for this year’s Korn Ferry Tour Finals.
So no matter whether you’re paying attention to the very top of the leaderboard or to these little games within the game below the surface, there will be plenty to watch at this week’s Wyndham Championship as those involved labor to make it to just one more week of golf as the most massive season in PGA Tour history begins to come to a close. It adds several exciting subplots to the last week of the regular season and means that, as is almost always the case, there will some drama in Greensboro.
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