- FedExCup Points: 50,000
- Purse: $7.0 million
- Winning Share: $1,260,000
- Yards: 7,415
PGATOUR.com Chief of Correspondents
NORTON, Mass. -- Brett Quigley doesn't need to do the math.
Yes, he ranks 115th in the FedExCup standings, and he needs to move into the top 70 to make the field for the BMW Championship. Quigley enters this week's Deutsche Bank Championship trailing the current bubble boy, Steve Flesch, by 3,525 points.
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| • More stats, click here |
Add it up, and Quigley knows he faces quite a challenge if he is to continue to advance in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup. And if you don't believe him, just ask his friends.
"Five or six people already called me on Monday to let me know I needed to finish third or better to get to Chicago," Quigley said, grinning. "I already know what I need to do."
Actually, he probably needs at least two-way tie for second. But Quigley, who grew up 90 minutes from the TPC Boston, relishes the challenge he faces this week.
"I think for me it's going to free me up," he said. "That sounds weird, but I just know I've got to play great and I'm going to have that mentality or mindset that I've got to go out and win this golf tournament.
"I actually think it's going to be better for me. I mean, I can get rid of the other distractions and focus on my golf."
Quigley, who turned 38 the day after he missed the cut in the Wyndham Championship two weeks ago, already knows how to deal with the pressure.
A week ago at The Barclays, he looked up at one of the electronic scoreboards just before he was going to putt on the 17th green. The projected FedExCup standings displayed on the LED board showed Quigley outside the top 120 who would advance to the Deutsche Bank Championship.
He stepped away, regrouped and made the putt. Quigley then rolled in another birdie putt at the 18th hole and moved from 118th to 115th in the process. He says he feels like all 120 players who made it to Boston have a much better handle on the Playoffs after the first event.
"Actually I felt the most pressure on Saturday and Sunday last week," he said. "For me it was great motivation because I knew I needed to play well, and literally on the scoreboard with two holes to go, according to the computer I was outside the line and I knew I needed to birdie the last two to have a chance.
"That was the most pressure I've felt probably in my career, knowing what I needed to do. I had to birdie the last two holes just to get to play here. So I felt a lot of heat there."
Quigley has never won a PGA TOUR event, and he'd like nothing better than to break that string this week at the TPC Boston before a home crowd. If he doesn't play well enough to make the field for the second Playoff event, though, Quigley already has other plans.
Unless he punches his ticket for Chicago, the Rhode Islander already has surgery scheduled for next Friday to repair a complex tear in the media meniscus of his right knee.
Quigley says the knee has been hurting since February. The pain became acute during the first round of the Wyndham Championship -- "I felt like my knee was going to explode," he remembered -- and Quigley had an MRI done that afternoon.
"I think I've been in a little bit of denial where it's been hurting for a while and I haven't really done anything about it," Quigley said. "I don't know if I didn't want to find out or didn't want to know what was wrong, but it's just been really bothering.
"The strange thing is doesn't affect my golf swing, only affects my walking and reading putts because I can't really bend down to read putts like I normally do."
Quigley doesn't know what caused the injury. He just remembers that his knee started "clicking and popping" when he bent down to read putts during the FBR Open in Phoenix, and the pain has gotten progressively worse.
"The way mine's torn, it's a complex tear, meaning there's a spider tear in the meniscus, and they'll go and just remove it," Quigley said.
Although doctors offered no guarantees, Quigley expects the recovery time to be four to six weeks. There is a possibility, then, that he could still compete in some of the PGA TOUR Fall Series, should he want -- or need to -- in order to retain his playing privileges for 2008.
Quigley currently ranks 106th on the money list. That tie for 25th last week at The Barclays pushed him over $717,000 in earnings -- which is roughly what Quigley thought he would need to finish in the all-exempt top 125 at the end of the season.
"That's another thing I was thinking about last week, too, so I knew I needed to play well," he said. "Certainly a great week here would take care of that, too. That was added pressure from last week."
Regardless of what happens for him personally this week at the TPC Boston, Quigley thinks the Playoffs have succeeded in bringing together standout fields on good venues and created excitement among the fans. The players are feeling the heat, too.
"I was against shortening the fields in the beginning, but certainly they accomplished some excitement or some pressure for us," he said. "They pair everybody by number, so I played with J.P. Hayes and Harrison Frazar, and we all knew we needed to play well last week.
"It's tough to be fighting against guys that you're friends with. It's different in other sports where (they have) playoffs -- Yankees, Red Sox, it's a rivalry, but when you're competing to advance to the next week with your buddies, it's a pretty tough thing."
