The cruelest cut of all

The first miss, a par putt from 14 feet, garnered a loud groan from the crowd. Ditto for the 3-foot bogey putt coming back that cruelly spun out of the hole.

So Brandt Snedeker stepped behind the stubborn little white sphere for the third time, almost casually putting his weight on his right foot, the left on tiptoes, for his tap-in from a mere 14 inches. For the average Joe on any other Sunday at Cog Hill, one of the country’s most revered public courses, the ball probably would have cooperated.

But this was the final round of the 2009 BMW Championship, the third event in the FedExCup Playoffs. Both the stakes and the pressure were high. Just 30 players would advance to compete for the $10 million first prize at the TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola, and when Snedeker arrived on the 18th green that afternoon, he was projected to be one of them.

Snedeker had started the day tied for second with Marc Leishman, a distant seven shots behind Tiger Woods, who was still in his prime. The three were playing together in the day’s final pairing.

Moments earlier, as he walked up the 18th fairway, Snedeker asked NBC’s Roger Maltbie where he stood. The announcer told him a bogey would keep him inside the top 30 and headed to East Lake for the second time in his career.

That opportunity had died with the missed 3-footer. But the dagger was not all the way in yet.

Amazingly, the putt from 14 inches lipped out. The fans surrounding the green gasped. A deafening silence followed as Snedeker finally put the ball to rest with a fourth swipe of his putter.

Triple bogey.

No East Lake.

Seven years later, the memory remains a vivid one.

“That pressure of trying to get in the top 30 is one of the hardest things you can have out here because it means so much,” Snedeker said. “It means you can set your schedule for next year. It means that you’ve had a great year regardless of how it’s gone because you’ve qualified for it.

“You end up watching leaderboards all day. You jump in, jump out. It’s just a stressful, stressful day. … I just kind of wilted underneath it. It was tough, as tough as anything I’ve experienced in golf.”

This Sunday at Crooked Stick, another player will come oh-so-close to golfing nirvana only to have his heart broken by a missed putt or a tee shot that veers into the lake that links the right side of the 18th fairway. And someone else will happily be making last-minute travel plans to the ATL.

Just ask John Senden.

While Snedeker was four-putting, Senden was near the scorer’s trailer fielding questions from the media. He started that Sunday tied for sixth but a double bogey on the 17th and a final round of 6-over 77 appeared to have left him on the outside looking in. He had been playing in the group ahead of Snedeker’s.

“They told me I was 31 (in points), and I thought, ‘Ohhhh, so close,’ ” Senden recalled. “And then all of a sudden, it was no more than 5 minutes and the next group comes along.”

As the disappointed Senden talked and the crowd’s reaction began to telegraph Snedeker’s misfortunes, the Aussie’s caddie was watching a nearby TV monitor. When Snedeker’s triple bogey and final-round 76 was posted, Senden was the last man in.

His caddie couldn’t wait to deliver the news. The team’s joy wasn’t lost on Snedeker, and he certainly couldn’t begrudge their excitement.

“That’s exactly the reaction you want to have,” Snedeker said. “But that shows you kind of the dichotomy of it. You’re sitting there about in tears, or, he was about in tears before I came in and then it just completely flip-flopped on the last hole.

“So there’s lots of stuff going on in your head on the last hole.”

“It was definitely a mix of emotions,” Senden agreed. “A mix of good and bad feelings on that particular hole, and good for me.”

Snedeker has thought about the four-putt “quite a few times.” He’s even seen it on YouTube – just Google “Brandt Snedeker four-putt BMW Championship” and you can, too.

“It’s painful to watch,” Snedeker said. “I can see myself – my feeling and my nerves and my process. I wasn’t able to think about the right stuff.”

Snedeker also made himself watch the TOUR Championship – “the whole thing,” he said. That was his penance for the gaffe on the 72nd hole at Cog Hill. He wanted to make sure he understood “what that putt cost me.”

One of the perks of getting into the top 30 is the guarantee of a spot in the first three majors of the following year. The same goes for two of the four World Golf Championships and the invitational events. Oh, and there’s that not-so-small matter of the chance to win the $10 million bonus.

“I think that is a big focus for us now,” Senden said. “As the FedExCup has gone 10 years now it’s really gained momentum and it’s what we’re striving for now because I think winning the FedExCup is just as good as winning a major.”

For Snedeker, missing out on the 2010 Masters was particularly painful. Turns out the Tennessean, who nearly won the season’s first major in 2008, didn’t fit any other qualifying criteria come April.

“That’s my favorite tournament,” Snedeker said. “It’s one of those things that carries with you.”

Snedeker is lucky, though. While he’s been eliminated at the BMW four times in the nine previous years he’s made the Playoffs, the nine-time TOUR winner also captured the FedExCup in 2012.

“I think everybody out here realizes if you make the TOUR Championship, you’ve had a good year regardless of how it’s gone,” Snedeker said. “That’s kind of how I view it. It’s so finite there. You get in, all of a sudden, it’s a great year, you’re in all the four majors.

“You go to East Lake and you have a good time and all that kind of stuff and you have a chance to win 10 million dollars. When you don’t (get to East Lake), it’s done with just like that.”

Bill Haas is another player who has experienced the broad range of emotions in the FedExCup Playoffs.

He won the $10 million bonus and the TOUR Championship in 2011 – one of only two players outside the top 5 to pick up the dual victories at East Lake. However, Haas also has been eliminated at the BMW Championship three times, including 2012 when a bogey at the 72nd hole at Crooked Stick prevented him from defending his TOUR Championship title.

Haas remembers thinking about where he was projected all day at Crooked Stick. He came in ranked 28th in the FedExCup. A second-round 64 left him tied for ninth and he went into the final round sharing 18th.

“I don’t think I was thinking about it on every shot but I was struggling,” Haas recalled. “And it just seemed like the round couldn’t end quick enough for me to get in and make it – because then you feel like, all right, if I can just make it to the TOUR Championship then we all start at even again.”

Instead, Haas was eliminated when he missed a 6-footer for par on the 18th that Sunday in Indiana. It was his third straight bogey, and the fourth in the last five holes.

Haas signed for a 78 when a 77 would have sent him to East Lake. A player with a familiar name – John Senden – ended up going instead, moving to No. 29 when Haas fell to 32nd.

Unlike at Cog Hill, the Aussie wasn’t even at the course this time. Instead, he was at the airport watching the final holes on TV.

“I had enough time before I left on my flight, so at least I got on my flight knowing (I’d made it), so that was good,” Senden said.

A grim-faced Haas cleaned out his locker and was walking to the parking lot when several reporters caught up with him. The disappointment was palpable.

“It was one of those examples where your mind outworks your body and it hurts you,” Haas said. “I just remember it being a bad day, a disappointing day.

“(It’s) one of those days where you go home and just try not to think about it but you can’t sleep that night and you feel like you let yourself down.”

And Haas has put himself behind the eight-ball again this year. He entered the Playoffs ranked 29th but a missed cut at The Barclays dropped him to 36th and he tumbled to 46th when he tied for 67th at the Deutsche Bank Championship.

Of course, there could be instances where falling just short of the top 30 could be more palatable.

“If you’d have been 60th and you finished tied for fifth but that got you to 31st, you’d say, ‘All right, well at least I finished well and just didn’t quite make it,’ ” Haas said.

But if you had a meltdown like he did at Crooked Stick, finishing 31st or 32nd is “no fun.”

Eventually, though, it’s replaced by perspective.

“At some point you’ve just got to tell yourself it was still a good year,” Haas said. “My first few years, I was barely like number 100 every year. So to go from that to making the TOUR Championship or even finishing 31st, you’ve got to say there are some positives there.

“So I don’t remember weighing on it so much that I was just devastated. I mean, life goes on. There are plenty of people who would’ve wanted to be in my shoes. I always say that when I’m close – close to the Ryder Cup, close to the Presidents Cup, close to top 30.

“Those are all pretty good problems. There’s probably going to be a time in my career when I’m trying to make 125. You hope that doesn’t happen but there might be that time and I’ll be saying, man, I wish I was on that top 30 bubble.

“So you try put it in perspective that it’s all positive and just try prove to yourself you can do it under the gun.”

Funny. The year Haas won the FedExCup, he went into the Playoffs ranked 15th but tumbled to 18th, then 24th and finally 25th entering the TOUR Championship.

At East Lake, though, the dominoes fell in Haas’ favor as he hit a brilliant shot from the water beside the 17th hole in regulation and went on to beat Hunter Mahan in a playoff. It was such a crazy day that Haas didn’t realize he’d picked up the dual victories until he did a TV interview by the 18th green.

“I guess I’m proof that that guy who gets there 28th, 29th, 30th … anything can happen,” Haas said with a smile. “You just never know.”