BMW Championship, Round 3 updates: FedExCup Playoffs

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Tiger Woods won’t be contending for a third FedExCup next week at the TOUR Championship unless he can pull off one of the biggest performances of his career.

With scores of 73-75-72, the BMW Championship is the third non-major, and sixth tournament overall, that Woods has opened with three over-par rounds. At 10-over the 82-time PGA TOUR winner is tied 55th, and nine strokes off the pace he’d need to be to have a chance to progress to East Lake.

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So he will need to post a low number on a course that has averaged more than two shots over par through three rounds. Only once did he post an under-par final round (2007 PLAYERS Championship) on the above mentioned occasions.

Sadly for Woods he could’ve been much closer to pulling off a miracle. After birdies on the third and fourth holes on Saturday he was climbing slowly up the leaderboard and even a bogey on the 10th kept him within a good run of applying some pressure.

But his tee shot on the par-4 17th hole sailed right and into a water hazard and his third shot after a drop went miles left. In the end he carded a triple bogey seven and likely killed off any hope of being around next week.

International Trio Set to play on… Three International players sit in position to play their way into the TOUR Championship through three rounds of the BMW Championship. Presidents Cup players Adam Scott (Australia) and Joaquin Niemann (Chile) are joined by Canadian Mackenzie Hughes as those who currently project from outside in for a place at East Lake.

All three currently sit in a tie for third place and will start Sunday just two shots off the lead. As such their focus in winning the tournament rather than the projections. For the record, Nieman projects from 31st to 18th, Hughes is set to move from 36th to 22nd and Scott from 38th to 23rd. Of course they will need to continue their good play for 18 more holes.

“This golf course is actually a pretty good distraction because it's so hard that you have to just focus on every shot so much that it's easy to just kind of get in your own world out there and just the task at hand, the task at hand. So that's been kind of nice,” Hughes said.

“Obviously in between shots your mind wanders sometimes, but this is kind of where you want to be. Obviously I would have loved to have locked it up by now, but I'm happy to have this opportunity and I'll go embrace it tomorrow.”

For Scott, a spot in the TOUR Championship, which he won in 2006 a year prior to it becoming the FedExCup finale, would be impressive given he only returned from the COVID-19 break at the recent PGA Championship.

“It would be a great achievement to reach East Lake. I've played very well this year. I had one really great week, but I've left myself a lot of work to kind of get in there,” he said in reference to his win at the Genesis Invitational in February. “Better late than never. I've got a chance to do it tomorrow, so if I can play a really good round tomorrow, I'd be very proud to be there at East Lake and kind of roll the dice and see what happens there.”

Of course if three project in, that means three project out. At this stage Cameron Champ (T59) projects to drop from 25th to 31st, Adam Long (T59) from 27th to 32nd and Kevin Streelman (T63) from 28th to 33rd.