Brendan Steele tripped at the Barclay’s Championship last week, posting only a 5-over-par 75-70 — 145 to miss the cut by three strokes. He was, however, in good company, since Jordan Spieth, who entered the tournament as the No. 1 golfer in the world, was two shots worse.
Nevertheless, the native Idyllwilder has enough FedExCup points to play in this week’s second-round playoff tournament, the $8.25 million Deutsche Bank Championship at the TPC Boston course in Norton, Massachusetts.
Brendan had 895 FedExCup points, entering last Thursday’s play in 47th place, but he dropped to 55th place as a result of missing last week’s cut.
Even if he does not do well this week, he may still have enough points to play in the third round in two weeks, the BMW Championship, which is open to players in the top 70 FedExCup points rankings going into that tournament.
Of course, he will need to do very well in these next two tournaments — a pair of top-20s or top-15s, perhaps — to advance in three weeks to the Tour Championship, open to only the top 30 players on the points list. Currently, the 30th-ranked player has 1221 points, so Brendan may need to pick up some 400 or more points to gain entry there, with its accompanying invitation to next year’s Masters.
The Deutsche Bank is played Friday through Monday. B tees off Friday at 9:52 a.m. PDT and Saturday at 5:42 a.m. PDT. He’ll play with Billy Horschel and Daniel Berger both days.
Jack Clark can be reached at [email protected].
