Brendan Steele fired a 9-under-par 66-68-73-68 — 275 at the 3M Open in Blaine, Minnesota, last week for a share of 53rd place. The native Idyllwilder’s drives averaged 307.8 yards while finding 76.79% percent of the fairways, and he hit an excellent 84.72% percent of the greens in regulation. Putting hurt, though, as he averaged giving away 1.564 strokes to the field each day with the putter. Had he been just even with the field in putting, he likely would have finished in the top 20.
Brendan currently is ranked 158th on the FedExCup points list and is 208th in the Official World Golf Ranking. This season, a rough one for him, he’ll not qualify for The Open Championship in Northern Ireland. So his next tournament is expected to be July 25 on the Montreaux Golf & Country Club course in Reno: the Barracuda Championship, which is played in Modified Stableford format, which B likes.
Under Modified Stableford format, a par is worth zero points, while a birdie is worth +2 and a bogey is -1. This system encourages aggressive play, since the reward for a birdie is larger than the penalty for a bogey. Similarly, an eagle counts +5 and a double eagle (aka albatross) counts +8, while a double bogey or even worse counts only -3. Of course, in Modified Stableford, the highest score wins.