On Sundays at the Wyndham Championship, where your heart can be broken and unbroken a dozen times in the span of a couple of hours, the emotional odyssey facing Mark Hubbard had only just begun when he narrowly missed his birdie putt on the 18th hole to finish at five-under. He had a share of second place, but as he told the reporters gathered, there’s no playoff for second, so his plan was to hit the bar in the clubhouse, wait, watch… and pray for the maths to work in his favour.
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Hubbard had no chance to catch runaway winner Cameron Young, but he did have a chance to make the FedEx Cup Playoffs, which had seemed far-fetched at the start of the week and also at the start of the day. But the brilliant 63 was the best score of the final round, and it had briefly vaulted him from his starting position of 98th in the playoff hunt all the way inside the top 70. If things had ended at that precise moment, he’d be one of those blessed 70 heading to Memphis this week for the first playoff event, rather than going home on the 8:45am flight to Reno that he had booked at the start of the week.
As he sat and had a drink – “dealer’s choice”, he said, when asking for specifics – he had a few ‘rooting interests’. He needed to finish in a three-way tie for second, minimum, to stay inside the top 70, which meant that Mac Meissner, tied with him at 15-under at that moment, couldn’t get to 16. Additionally, he could afford one of the players lurking at 14-under (Chris Kirk, Alex Noren) to tie him, but he couldn’t afford two.
And who was his main adversary? Not Meissner, Kirk or Noren, but Australia’s Cam Davis, who had finished at four-under and was 71st in the standings. Just as Hubbard was cheering for those multiple outcomes to play out, Davis desperately wanted something to spoil Hubbard’s story. Unlike Hubbard, though, he wasn’t hanging around. He’d been through this drama too many times, so he was flying to his caddie’s house in Nashville and would be content with a text message at the end of the day.
Mark Hubbard flew home on Sunday – in more ways than one. [Photo: Johnnie Izquierdo]
Is your head reeling yet? If you followed along, you knew the reeling had just begun. As it turned out, Hubbard would see one of his two criteria met – only one other player, Noren, would reach 15-under – but the other took a major hit when Mac Meissner played the par-5 15th in clinical fashion, making his three-footer for birdie to seize second by himself and knock Hubbard out of the top 70. Now Hubbard needed Meissner to bogey one of the final three holes, but on 16 and 17, he could only dodge two narrow birdie misses and tap-in pars. That left the difficult par-4 18th, where Meissner blasted his drive 333 yards and dropped his approach 22 feet from the hole. Hope gave way to desperation – only a three-putt could save Hubbard now – but the lag went just inside two feet, and the par putt was a formality.
Hubbard was out. Cam Davis was in.
If you thought that was heartbreaking, may I introduce you to another Davis – Davis Thompson. His story is far easier to tell; having started 78th in the FedEx Cup standings, he played a brilliant first two rounds, and by the 15th hole on Sunday, he was just one birdie from forging his way into the playoffs. He got the birdie on that very hole, pouring in a dramatic 47-footer to reach 11-under:
https://twitter.com/PGATOUR/status/1952111423506493809
Now he needed to play the last three holes in even and got two-thirds of the way there with stress-free pars on the 16th and 17th. He reached the green in two on 18 but was 47 feet away – an extremely difficult two-putt. Adrenaline pumping, Davis blasted his birdie try six feet past the hole and watched in agony as the downhill comebacker slid by.
He fell to 71st, and this time the beneficiary was Matti Schmid, who, three groups ahead of Davis, had birdied the final three holes. When he finished, he was still lagging behind in 72nd place and needed the misfortune of both Hubbard and Thompson to sneak in as the 70th player.
The great irony here is that Schmid ended right where he began, in 70th place, and none of the other players mentioned thus far, from Hubbard to Davis to Thompson, moved to the other side of the bubble.
In fact, only two players shifted – Chris Kirk, who finished at 14-under and in a tie for fifth, rose from 73rd to 61st, while Ben An, who missed the cut, fell from 69th to 74th.
Somehow, though, those were the least dramatic bubble stories of the day. Perhaps the most interesting on Sunday morning belonged to Gary Woodland, whose recovery from brain surgery was chronicled on Netflix’s “Full Swing” and who began the day projected in 70th place.
“I’m tired,” he told CBS’ Amanda Balionis after his third round. “I need to get back into a dark room and just try to turn my brain off as much as I can.”
Gary Woodland finished the season 72nd in FedEx Cup standings, two spots short of advancing to Memphis later this week. [Photo: Jared C. Tilton]
Unfortunately for Woodland, the fatigue showed on the weekend, with dual rounds of 70 that nudged him outside the cut-off. He made a spirited rally with birdies on 15 and 17, but he couldn’t avoid three bogeys at the back, and by day’s end he had slipped to 72nd in the standings.
As the tour heads to Memphis for the FedEx St Jude Championship, other players making the trip near the cut line include Erik van Rooyen, who withdrew after his opening-round 73 but only fell to 68th, and fellow cut-missers Kevin Yu and Davis Riley. Players on the wrong side of the bubble include Nicolai Hojgaard, who made the cut but couldn’t improve his position past 73rd, Christiaan Bezuidenout, who finished at one-under to fall from 74th to 76th, and Keith Mitchell, who entered the week 72nd but missed the Wyndham cut.
Meanwhile, there was a second battle going on, with slightly lower but still significant stakes: the top 50 in the standings at the end of next week’s playoff event will make the BMW Championship and earn automatic exemptions into next year’s signature events. J.T. Poston improved his position from 54th to 51st with a T-11 position, and Aaron Rai, who finished in a tie for fifth, rose from 58th to 55th. Jordan Spieth started the week at 50th and a 31st-place tie in Greensboro moved him to 48th.
Another Australian – Min Woo Lee – will be the bubble boy this week, entering the FedEx St Jude Championship in 50th spot.
