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At the Stanford St. Jude Championship last week, Woody Austin's come-from-behind victory officially counts as a surprise. What was no surprise in Memphis, though, was the stellar performance by Team Nationwide member Brandt Snedeker.

Brandt Snedeker has climbed into the top 40 in both FedExCup points and money earned. (Marc Feldman/WireImage)

• Brandt Snedeker's Player Page

Snedeker, a native of Nashville and former college star at Vanderbilt, tied for fifth at TPC Southwind, putting together four consistent rounds of 70-68-69-68 to finish at 5-under 275. More impressively, to earn his second top-10 finish of the season, he overcame a quadruple-bogey 7 on the par-3 11th hole that not only could have derailed his first round but ruined his entire week just as it was getting started.

As proof of his maturity, the 26-year-old -- who won twice on the 2006 Nationwide Tour -- rebounded from that shocking 7 with four straight pars before ending his round with a pair of birdies and another closing par. He made only three bogeys the entire week, and was tied for third in total number of pars made, with 56.

His fine finish moved Snedeker all the way up to 42nd in FedExCup points with 4,584, and to 43rd on the official money list, with $1,074,581. He is now third, behind fellow Team Nationwide member Jeff Quinney (26th in FedExCup points) and Anthony Kim (31st) among rookies.

Snedeker's finish in Memphis is just the latest solid performance in an excellent season in which he has made 13 cuts and missed only five, and earned six top-25 results. The sum of his game, in fact, was better than his parts in Memphis, as his tie for fifth came as a result of finishing tied for 27th in fairways hit (62.5%), 25th in driving distance (299.0 yards), tied for 23rd in greens in regulation (61.1%) and tied for eighth in putts per round (27.0).

The same can be said of Snedeker's performance over the entire season, where his overall ranking is higher than all of his individual stats -- except the most important one. Snedeker ranks 32nd on the PGA TOUR with a 70.40 scoring average.

He is 112th in driving distance (281.1-yard average), 130th in fairways hit (58.05%), 92nd in greens in regulation (63.18%) and 63rd in putting average (1.782 per green hit in regulation). But as befitting Vanderbilt's engineering tradition, Snedeker has learned how to assemble all the pieces of his game into an efficient finished product.