Third-round notebook: Wyndham Championship
By Doug Milne, PGA TOUR Staff
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Arjun Atwal continued to make the most of Monday Qualifying by posting a third-round 5-under 65. He takes a three-stroke-lead into the final round Sunday. Atwal's three-stroke lead is the ninth of the season. Most recently, Nick Watney held a three-stroke lead through 54 holes at last week's PGA Championship. A final-round, 9-over 81 resulted in a T18 finish.
Atwal has never held any portion of the lead after 54 holes in a PGA TOUR event.
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Prior to this week, Atwal has held at least a share of the lead at any round's end three times. Of those, his best finish was a T5 at the 2005 Zurich Classic of New Orleans after holding a share of the first-round lead. Most recently, he held a share of the first-round lead at the AT&T National, where he finished T41.
Atwal becomes the second consecutive Monday Qualifier to find himself in a final round of a PGA TOUR event contested in the state of North Carolina. Earlier this season, Billy Mayfair Monday Qualified for the Wells Fargo Championship and began the final round paired with Davis Love III. Mayfair finished 14th.
Atwal's best TOUR finish is a P2 at the 2005 BellSouth Classic, where he lost in a five man playoff to Phil Mickelson. Atwal is playing in his 120th PGA TOUR event. He has 51 starts on the Nationwide Tour.
Atwal began the 2010 season playing on a Minor Medical Exemption out of the Qualifying Tournament/Nationwide Tour category. He had eight events in which he had to earn $586,007 to gain status for the remainder of the season. His eighth start was the RBC Canadian Open, where he failed to earn the needed balance. Therefore, he is not eligible to receive FedExCup points this week, regardless of his finish.
Atwal (1st) and Jeev Milkha Singh (T18) become the first two players from India to ever share positions within the top-20 of any round on the PGA TOUR.
Since 1976, 22 players at the Wyndham Championship have emerged victorious after holding a 54-hole lead-co-lead, most recently Carl Pettersson. So far this year, the third-round leader has gone on to win in 14 of 35 stroke-play events.
Scott McCarron birdied his final four holes to shoot a bogey-free, 7-under 63 for a 14-under 196. The 63 is his best score of the season. Through 11 rounds at Sedgefield, McCarron has never posted a round above 70.
With his 7-under 63, Scott McCarron has now posted rounds of par or better in 18 of his last 19 rounds. He shot an 81 in the final round of the Reno-Tahoe Open.
McCarron claimed runner-up honors at the 2008 Wyndham Championship moving from 139th to 77thin the FedExCup standings, playing his way into the first two events in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedexCup events.
McCarron is in search of his first win since the 2001 BellSouth Classic, a span of 206 events. Should he win Sunday, it will have been 9 years, 4 months and 21 days between wins. The record for longest gap between wins belongs to Robert Gamez, who went 15 years and 6 months between wins.
In the first group out at 7 a.m. Kevin Na tied the tournament record with a 9-under 61. He sits at 12 under headed into the final round, five strokes off Atwal's lead. Pettersson posted a 61 in round two en route to his win in 2008, while Atwal opened this year's tournament with the 9-under score. The course record belongs to Matthew Lane, who shot a 10-under 60 in the 1998 Nike Greensboro Open.
Three times a runner-up, Na is making his 181st start this week. His best finish thus far in 2010 is a T2 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard. Of four previous Wyndham Championship starts (2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008), the only cut Na has made came with T37 honors in 2007.
Any player ranked 153rd or better in the FedExCup entering this week can earn their way into The Barclays with a top-5 this week. Scott Piercy is one such player. He entered the week 140th and is T2 at 14 under after the third round. Piercy is now projected at No. 87th in the FedExCup standings.
Brandt Snedeker, ranked 45th in FedExCup standings coming into the week, claimed his first and only PGA TOUR win at the Wyndham Championship at Forrest Oaks CC in 2007. Snedeker has now posted 13 of 15 rounds under par in Greensboro.
Lucas Glover has finished in the top 25 in each of the last five years at the Wyndham Championship. Glover has shot par or better in 24 of 26 rounds at the Wyndham Championship
Kevin Streelman, who won the $1 million Kodak Challenge in 2009, finished T6 at the 2008 Wyndham Championship and T44 at the 2009 Wyndham Championship. In 11 career rounds at the Wyndham Championship, Streelman has nine rounds in the 60s and one 71.
John Rollins has struggled of late, having missed five of his last eight cuts coming into Greensboro. His lone top-10 finish of the year was a T8 at the Sony Open in Hawaii. Rollins is making his eighth Wyndham Championship start this week, and first since 2008 (MC). His best previous finish is a T27 in 2004.
As the final event in the FedExCup Regular Season, the Wyndham Championship plays a vital role in the race to the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup. The top 96 players in the FedExCup standings coming into the Wyndham Championship have locked in a spot at The Barclays for the first event of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup. This means that all the players ranked 97 or higher in the FedExCup standings are "on the bubble" and are fighting to get into the top 125.
Ten players made the 3-under cut on the number, five of whom are currently ranked outside the top 125, each still with a chance to work their way into next week's Barclays field. Additionally, 35 of the 78 players who made the 3-under cut began the week outside the top 125.
With the FedExCup points reset coming after the BMW Championship (third event), it guarantees that all 30 players at THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola will have a mathematical chance at winning the FedExCup. It also means that the top five players in the FedExCup points entering THE TOUR Championship will control their own destiny -- if they win the TOUR Championship they will also win the FedExCup.
Scoring Averages at the par-70 Sedgefield Country Club:
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The 67.231 scoring average in round three is the second-lowest of the year, behind only round three of the Greenbrier Classic (66.965).
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