Brendan Steele played again last weekend, making his fourth cut in as many tournaments this very early 2015 PGA Tour season. The Idyllwild native now has made eight consecutive cuts in tour events, counting the end of last season. Last week in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, he posted a 7-under-par 68-68-70-71 — 277, good enough to tie for 37th place and earn $26,000 in official prize money.
The information coming out of Mexico is not as complete as for many other tournaments, but his available stats suggest he placed high against the field in driving distance and greens in regulation, but fell back in driving accuracy and putting. Double bogies are still a problem this early on; he suffered two of them in last week’s tournament. To give you an idea of their importance, had they just been two pars instead of two doubles, he would have scored a top-10 finish, earned about $110,000 more in prize money, and captured twice as many FedExCup points.
Still, he picked up 31 FedExCup points last week, which gives him 120 points on the season, likely already more than a quarter of what he will need by next fall to retain his PGA Tour playing card for the 2016 tournament year.
After a fine start, we’re not looking for Steele to play again before January, but we’ll let you know if there is a change in that plan. He now has about six weeks to work on his game with the new sticks he’ll carry into the new year. We’ll report on what’s in his bag when he resumes play.
