[PHOTO: Oisin Keniry/R&A]
In the scheme of things, Rory McIlroy didn’t need to play in this week’s opening FedEx Cup playoff event on the PGA Tour, the FedEx St Jude Championship. In fact, he’s proving how little he needs to play in a lot of the tour’s big-money events.
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The tour has released the commitment list for the $US20 million St Jude event at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee, and McIlroy, the reigning Masters champion, wasn’t on it. With three wins this year, McIlroy, 36, is second on the FedEx Cup points list with 3,444 points to Scottie Scheffler’s 4,806 points. He has already mathematically locked up a berth in the second playoff event, the BMW Championship, reserved for the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings.
With additional bonus money being paid out for the standings at the end of the regular season tomorrow after the Wyndham Championship, McIlroy stands to earn $US6 million from the Comcast Business Top 10 pool and another $US4 million as part of the restructured FedEx bonus pool.
This is the fourth occasion this year in which the world’s No.2 player has skipped one of the tour’s marquee events; he previously decided to not play in the season-opening Sentry event, the RBC Heritage and Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament. That’s quite an irony considering McIlroy helped spearhead their creation.
Winner of 29 PGA Tour titles, McIlroy has had mixed results at TPC Southwind, finishing second-last in 2024 and missing the cut in 2022 when the field was 125 players, while in between he ended up T-3. But it’s the result last year that got his attention. “I finished, basically, dead last there this year, and only moved down one spot in the playoff standings,” he told The Telegraph last November.
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The opening playoff event is reserved for the top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings after the conclusion of the Wyndham Championship. McIlroy’s absence ensures that the field will be 69 players next week because there is no alternate list.
The Northern Irishman has played in only 14 PGA Tour events this season. He won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Players Championship, both signature events, before capturing the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam. It is believed that he will compete in the BMW Championship, at Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland, beginning August 14, though even that might not be necessary to reach the playoff finale, the Tour Championship, which features the top 30 players.
