Brendan Steele moved up the leaderboard from last week, tying for 30th at the Wells Fargo Championship on the Quail Hollow course in Charlotte, North Carolina. The native Idyllwilder carded a 3-under-par 72-72-69-72 — 285 to earn 38 FedExCup points.
Steele now stands 67th on the FedExCup list with 446 points with about four months of the season remaining. The top 125 players at the end of the regular season qualify for the playoffs and win their playing tickets for next season.
The PGA Tour website has been revamped for this year, and, unfortunately, it now provides considerably fewer statistics for this season and for past seasons, rendering analysis more difficult and less complete. But in the available, serious tournament stats last week except one, Steele placed better than the 30th place he achieved in scoring.
He was 18th in driving distance (305) and 23rd in driving accuracy (55.3 percent). He placed 22nd in greens in regulation (63.8 percent), 19th in putts per green (1.7) and 18th in strokes gained putting (0.840). He tied for 34th in sand saves at 50 percent.
This week Steele travels to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, for the tournament sometimes spoken of as the Fifth Major — THE PLAYERS Championship on the TPC Sawgrass course, with its famous 17th-hole island green. The purse is worth $10 million.