To paraphrase the great Lloyd Christmas from “Dumb and Dumber”, we’re telling them there’s a chance.
The Web .com Tour Finals begin this week at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship and culminate with the Tour Championship in a month’s time where the 25 players who accumulate the most money over the four events will receive US PGA Tour cards for 2019.
Cameron Davis [pictured], Rhein Gibson, Brett Drewitt and Curtis Luck all qualified for the finals by virtue of finishing inside the top-75 in the Web .com Tour regular season and they have been joined in the field at Ohio State University Golf Club by Matt Jones, Aaron Baddeley, Stuart Appleby, Cameron Percy and John Senden, who all finished outside the top-125 on the main tour moneylist and are seeking to further their status for 2019.
But while there is close to a 20 per cent chance of securing a PGA Tour card, you need only look at the depth of talent teeing it up to know the intensity of competition will exceed that associated with the former six-round Q-School torture test.
Former US Open champion Lucas Glover is in the field this week along with a further 25 former PGA Tour winners with a combined 66 career victories between them, among those Hunter Mahan who, like Appleby, boasts nine US Tour wins on his résumé.
Jonathan Byrd, who won the 2017 Web .com Tour Championship and has five PGA Tour wins to his name, is again back competing along with Ben Crane and Chad Campbell.
Luck produced a gutsy effort last week at the WinCo Foods Portland Open to move inside the cut-off for the playoffs and can continue that momentum at a course where he has played well previously. The West Australian was the best performed Aussie in this event 12 months ago when he finished tied for 19th, Drewitt and Percy two shots further back in a tie for 31st.
Although he has the ability to earn a number of starts in 2019 through the past winner’s category, Baddeley will seek to continue a streak of playing at least 20 events on the main tour that stretches back to 2002.
A Sunday 66 at the Wyndham Championship was only good enough to move Baddeley up to 132nd in the FedEx Cup but top-30 finishes in each of his past two PGA Tour starts will carry the type of confidence required for the cutthroat nature of the Web .com Tour Finals.