Matt McCarty had an early tee time on Sunday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t the plan going in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of controlled my own destiny. Now for that not to be the case kind of sucks. But it is what it is, and we\u2019ll see,\u201d he said post-round.<\/p>\n
McCarty entered the week at No. 48, just inside the PGA Tour\u2019s all-important top 50 bubble. The top 50 get into next week\u2019s BMW Championship, but more importantly they get into all of next season\u2019s Signature events, and maybe even more importantly than that, doing so will provide an inside track to qualifying for the new \u2018Championship Series\u2019 cutoff coming in 2028.<\/p>\n
McCarty didn\u2019t much help his cause with a T63 finish, which earned him just 7.75 FedEx Cup points. That meant he had to sit around and wait to see if he hung on as others from outside the top 50 tried to play their way in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to hop on a plane and not look at my phone for a while,\u201d McCarty said. \u201cI think that\u2019s better than kind of looking at it a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
LAST MAN IN<\/p>\n
McCarty\u2019s fellow bubble boy Maverick McNealy didn\u2019t mince words:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the top 50 number is probably the most important number on the PGA Tour right now,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst of all, you want to play against the best players in the world. Those are the guys you grew up watching on TV. You want to play at the highest level, and that\u2019s what these Signature Events are. I want to play against guys like Scottie and Rory and all those guys.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecondly, being able to pick your schedule is so important. It\u2019s something that basically 50 guys get to do is know what they\u2019re playing in starting January 1st. That just makes your life so much better and so much more predictable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Noren, who entered at No. 46 and moved up 12 spots with a T3 finish, echoed its importance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot. I mean, I know the whole system is changing for 2028, so I wanted to get into the top 50 this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNealy entered the week in the precarious No. 49 spot; he navigated TPC Southwind\u2019s increasingly treacherous back nine in two under on Sunday to finish T19 and remain No. 49 at week\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
McCarty could only watch as his projection pinged back and forth from green to red \u2014 but he, too, made it through, slipping from No. 48 to No. 50, less than eight points clear of No. 51.<\/p>\n
Sungjae Im was the lone player from outside the top 50 to work his way in; despite stumbling with a Sunday four-over 74 he finished T5 to leap from No. 53 to No. 40.<\/p>\n
FIRST 3 OUT<\/p>\n
Inevitably if one golfer plays his way in that means he\u2019s knocked another player out, and on Sunday Sungjae Im\u2019s rise came at the expense of his friend Keith Mitchell, who finished No. 51.<\/p>\n
Mitchell\u2019s season concluded with a wild 18th hole where he hit his approach barefoot, standing in the water, only to watch as that approach bounded into the water by the green. He got up and down for bogey and T34; that wasn\u2019t quite enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s tough because this year I was like one foot in, one foot out all year, in the majors, in the Signature Events,\u201d Mitchell said post-round, explaining the bubble\u2019s real-life consequences. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a schedule. Really didn\u2019t have like, a life, off-weeks built in. Every week I was like, first alternate, or am I going to get in?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s good because you\u2019re playing well, but if you\u2019re in at the start of the season, it\u2019s a different life, literally, as a PGA Tour player. It felt like that out there today \u2026 I felt like I handled the nerves of an entire season on your hands pretty well today. It looks like I\u2019m going to come up short, but I did my best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan Spieth began the week at No. 54 and mounted a charge on his front nine Sunday, birdieing his first hole and going out in two-under 33 \u2014 temporarily projecting inside the top 50. But three back-nine bogeys proved to be his undoing as he signed for a typically chaotic even-par 70, a T19 week and a 52nd-place season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s funny, I just feel like I\u2019m kind of getting back to playing really good golf, like it\u2019s close to kicking off, and I\u2019m not going to play a tournament for a long time,\u201d Spieth said post-round, ever the optimist. \u201cI\u2019m very, very confident in what\u2019s coming. I just ran out of steam and maybe made a couple bad decisions over about a six-week stretch on what I was working on, and I just didn\u2019t quite have enough time to make up for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Max Homa finished at No. 53; his Sunday 68 was enough to move him to T24 for the week, but he would have needed two shots better to crack the top 50.<\/p>\n
A final look at the bubble:<\/p>\n
48. Eric Cole, 874.8 FedEx Cup points
49. Maverick McNealy, 862.8
50. Matt McCarty, 845.4
\u2014
51. Keith Mitchell, 837.6
52. Jordan Spieth, 818.4
53. Max Homa, 811.4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt McCarty had an early tee time on Sunday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. That wasn\u2019t the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1873,355,498,2124,531],"class_list":["post-51808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pga-championship","tag-fedex-cup","tag-jordan-spieth","tag-keith-mitchell","tag-max-homa","tag-pga-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}