Woodland sinks 65-foot eagle putt, leads by 3

Eleven months of competition culminates this weekend at the Wyndham Championship, the final event of the 2020-2021 PGA TOUR regular season. While several of the tournament favorites this week in Greensboro have long since locked up their spot in the postseason, for many, this presents the final opportunity to make a move to secure a berth at THE NORTHERN TRUST. RELATED LINKS: Twenty First Group | FedExCup Standings Last year, three players moved from outside the top-125 into the Playoffs with their performances at Sedgefield Country Club: Jim Herman, Zach Johnson and Shane Lowry. That was on par with the average to move into the top-125 the last six years, as 18 players have done it total in that span. The most movement we have seen in the final event of the season is five players, done on three different occasions (2008, 2009 and 2015). Twenty First Group predictive modeling says that 113 players have a 99.9% chance or greater of advancing to the postseason. There are 17 players with between a 20 and 80 percent chance of moving on – many of which begin this week behind the top-125 barrier. After running 10,000 simulations of this week’s Wyndham Championship, taking into account current player form, course fit and other key statistics, here are the five players with the best chance to make the leap from outside the top-125 into playoff position this weekend in North Carolina. Scott Piercy Current FedExCup Rank: 126 Top-125 Probability: 46.5% Currently just one spot out of the Playoffs, TFG projects that Scott Piercy has a better than 46 percent chance to qualify for his seventh consecutive PGA TOUR postseason. Just a week ago, Piercy sat in 144th in the points race, but a third place finish at the Barracuda Championship vaulted the veteran up the standings. It was his first top-ten finish on the TOUR in nearly 18 months. Piercy has some strong course history at Sedgefield, having made the cut in each of his last six starts in Greensboro. Since 2016, he has gained more than half-a-stroke on the field tee-to-green, per round, at this event. Piercy’s best Wyndham Championship finish was a tie for eighth place in 2010. Rickie Fowler Current FedExCup Rank: 130 Top-125 Probability: 39.1% Earlier this season, Rickie Fowler was granted a special exemption into the PGA Championship. While the decision was somewhat controversial at the time, Fowler made the most of the opportunity, finishing in a tie for eighth place at Kiawah Island. With murmurs about his exemption audible, Rickie posted his best worldwide finish in 17 months. While that week featured one type of pressure, this week will present a more omnipresent form of it. Currently five spots out of the top-125, Fowler has less than a forty percent chance of advancing to THE NORTHERN TRUST. Fowler has never missed the postseason in his PGA TOUR career, having qualified every year since 2010. A closing 65 at The Open Championship, followed by an opening 64 at the 3M Open, had Fowler backers excited for a late-season surge. But Rickie failed to break 70 in any of the last three rounds in Minnesota, and finished tied for 34th. Fowler’s only previous career start at this event was in 2016, when he finished tied for 22nd. Will he answer the bell once more? Tommy Fleetwood Current FedExCup Rank: 136 Top-125 Probability: 37.6% With top-ten finishes in more than 21 percent of his career starts on the PGA TOUR, Tommy Fleetwood has typically made the most of his stateside appearances during his career. But with one event left in the 2021 regular season, Fleetwood finds himself on the outside looking in at the FedExCup Playoffs. Fleetwood’s most significant statistical dip this season has come in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, where he’s dropped from 24th to 153rd. Now 35th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Fleetwood is averaging 7.2 yards less off the tee this season compared to last. Considering that, maybe Sedgefield is the perfect layout for a resurgent week for the Englishman: winners of the Wyndham Championship since 2010 rank about 14 percent lower in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee than the PGA TOUR average during that span. Justin Rose Current FedExCup Rank: 138 Top-125 Probability: 34.5% Less than two-and-a-half years removed from being the number one ranked player in the world, Justin Rose is in an unfamiliar spot this week at the Wyndham Championship. Currently 13 spots out of the Playoffs, Rose is down nearly 100 spots this season compared to last in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green (from 69th to 167th). Despite that, Rose has played his best golf in some of the biggest spots of the year. His two top-ten finishes on the PGA TOUR this season have both come at major championships: at the Masters, where he held the outright 36-hole lead, and the PGA Championship, where he closed with 67 to vault into a tie for eighth. Needing a big week in North Carolina, can the 10-time TOUR winner find that form again? Nate Lashley Current FedExCup Rank: 127 Top-125 Probability: 29.9% When Nate Lashley missed the cut last week at the Barracuda Championship, it moved him outside the top-125 in the FedExCup points race for the first time since last September. Now on the outside looking in, Lashley will need to avoid a fourth straight missed cut in order to qualify for the postseason. Thankfully for Lashley, his win at the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic will keep him on TOUR for next season, regardless of how he plays in Greensboro. Lashley made his debut at the Wyndham Championship in 2020, opening with 66 before ultimately finishing 77th. He will try to recapture that opening round performance this week and move on to the postseason.

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Unique to the calendar is this week’s co-sanctioned World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. It slots both in the fourth week of the 2018-19 PGA TOUR season and in the fourth-to-last week of the European Tour’s 2018 schedule. With no cut, dual-tour members are guaranteed to contribute points for the FedExCup and Race to Dubai. Among those in the field of 78 at Sheshan International Golf Club in Shanghai, China, who target multiple long-range goals are Americans Patrick Reed, Xander Schauffele and Pat Perez. As they work on their pursuit of the FedExCup, they also rank a respective third, 22nd and 84th in the Race to Dubai standings. Of the five winners of the WGC-HSBC Champions since it became an official PGA TOUR event in 2013-14, Dustin Johnson (2013), Russell Knox (2015), Hideki Matsuyama (2016) and Justin Rose (2017) also are committed to competing. Scroll beneath the expanded ranking for more on the course, how Rose prevailed and what Mother Nature intends to bring to the party. Tuesday’s Fantasy Insider will include Patrick Reed, Xander Schauffele, Alex Noren and 2015 champion Russell Knox among other notables. The history of the HSBC Champions, in its first four editions before it was tagged with the WGC badge and in the years since, is complicated. For example, it led off the European Tour’s 2008-09 schedule and appeared again very late in the same season when it debuted as a World Golf Championship. However, save in 2012 when the Olazábal Course at Mission Hills hosted, the constant has been Sheshan International. The stock par-72 tips at 7,261 yards. Its par 5s annually rank among the toughest sets of all courses on the PGA TOUR. The 603-yard eighth is especially difficult. In the tournament’s first five years as an official event on the PGA TOUR, No. 8 has been the hardest of all par 5s twice (2014-15, 2016-17). It slotted second-most challenging last season behind No. 14 at Pebble Beach. Similar to the experience at The Club at Nine Bridges, last week’s host of THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, wind influences scoring considerably at Sheshan International. Winning aggregates have ranged from Bubba Watson’s 11-under 277 in 2014 to Johnson’s 24-under in 2013. Rose recorded a two-stroke victory last year at 14-under 274. That’s a reasonable target again this week. The narrative for the majority of Rose’s career has been sculpted in his putting. As long as he’s in control of it, he’s borderline unbeatable. Case in point, he reached a career peak in putting in 2017-18 and won the FedExCup, and it started at Sheshan International where he ranked seventh in putts per greens in regulation. (ShotLink is not utilized in the tournament.) With bentgrass greens prepped to run just 11 feet or so on the Stimpmeter (to help balance the international field’s overall inexperience on faster surfaces with undulation), it’s understandable why scoring has gone as low as it has. The premium of hitting greens in regulation is multiplied due to the fact that Sheshan International was the third-hardest to scramble for par last year, and that not an anomaly. Moderate breezes cannot be ruled out during any of the four days of this week’s competition. It’ll freshen the most on Friday when a serious threat of rain shares the headline. Daytime temperatures won’t climb out of the low 70s. The winner of the Old Tom Morris Cup will bank 550 FedExCup points and $1.7 million of a record $10-million prize fund. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM’s Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Power Rankings (WGC-HSBC) TUESDAY*: Power Rankings (Sanderson Farms), Sleepers (WGC-HSBC), Fantasy Insider WEDNESDAY: One & Done (WGC-HSBC), One & Done (Sanderson Farms), Twitter live fantasy show * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by SERVPRO, which also publishes on Tuesdays.

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