Inside the FedExCup: Last chance to make Playoffs

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Kevin Stadler needs to make the cut this week to have any chance of playting in any of the Playoffs events.

OK, I admit it -- the Wyndham Championship is my favorite tournament of the Regular Season. You can have your Masters, your U.S. Open, your PGA Championship -- give me the tournament where there are maybe 30 guys for whom every single stroke matters -- on Friday.

Axley

The tournament where, on Sunday, I have 10 different names highlighted on my customized leaderboard because, for each one of those guys, a stroke or two is the difference between keeping the dream alive or waiting at least five weeks for the chance to tee it up again in their quest to keep their PGA TOUR card.

For most golf tournaments, the only competition that really matters is the competition for 1st. I can't imagine anyone except the player's immediate family really caring if he misses his putt to drop to T38 from T24. And if they're honest, the family probably doesn't care much either.

At the Wyndham, it matters.

Last year, Jeff Overton finished tied for second, to improve his seeding from 165th to 109th, Anders Hansen was T11, moving him to 137th from 151st and Shigeki Maruyama finished T7 to squeak into 140th from 162nd.

Each of those guys made it into the Playoffs for the FedExCup

by less than a handful of strokes. But Eric Axley was the real story. His eagle on No. 13 put him at -14 for the tournament, and the T20 finish would have secured his place in the Playoffs. But his bogey on 16 dropped him back to T27, and he missed the Playoffs by 24 points.

I had the chance, several years ago, to do some research for the PGA TOUR in which I asked a group of golf fans which of several possible scenarios they'd rather watch -- the leader in the fairway hitting his approach, a very famous player who was not in contention hitting a difficult shot from the rough, another famous player lining up a putt to break the course record but not win the tournament, or a journeyman pro attempting a 12 foot putt for par on 18, which would decide whether he kept his card for the coming year. The unanimous answer was the par putt on 18.

The trouble is, it is hard to know when a putt like that is crucial. Sometimes, at the last tournament of the year, there might be one or two shots that fit that description. For most pros, however, the crucial putt happened at a tournament 3 weeks ago, and you (and he) only find out in retrospect that he needed it to keep his card.

At the Wyndham, though (especially with the very cool FedExCup "Projected Points" tracker), I can identify probably two dozen different times throughout the day that someone is standing over a crucial shot as it happens. Not a crucial shot to take over the lead, or get within a stroke of it, or whatever -- a crucial shot that will move him from 19th, say, to a tie for 16th, and put him just inside the top 144.

It's mesmerizing stuff, at least to me. So now you know.