Brendan Steele’s  70-68-66-74 — 278 tied for 30th at the Quicken Loans National in Gainesville, Virginia, last week. He picked up 37 FedExCup points and more than $38,000 in official prize money. He now stands 56th on the FedExCup points list and 67th on the money list for this season. He ranks 101st in the Official World Golf Rankings.

For the tournament, Brendan’s drives found the fairways 62.5 percent of the time averaging 302.3 yards, the longest being 336. He hit a high 80.56 percent of the greens in regulation. Sunday, his approach-iron proximity (average distance from the pin of all approach shots between 100 to 250 yards) was a very respectable 25.7 feet, but he did not sink a putt of over 5 feet and made only one birdie on the day.

The Town Crier has learned that the native Idyllwilder will be in the field next week at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straights in Kohler, Wisconsin. He received a letter of invitation Monday morning making it official. "Steele. Brendan — Idyllwild, Calif." now appears in the field list at the official PGA Championship website.

But this week Brendan plays in a tournament he particularly enjoys: the $3.1-million Barracuda Championship played on the Montreux Golf and Country Club course in Reno. The Barracuda is the only tournament on the PGA Tour to employ a modified Stableford scoring system: A player earns 8 points for each double eagle, 5 for each eagle, 2 for each birdie, 0 for a par, -1 for each bogey and -3 for each double bogey or worse. The result is a “go for it” style of play with players taking risks they would not normally consider because of the higher risk-benefit payoff for success in a Stableford tournament.

Brendan tees off Thursday morning at 7:11 PDT and on Friday at 12:11 p.m. PDT.