With only the Wyndham Championship remaining, several golfers with ties to Atlanta and Georgia are in position to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs, whose four-tournament series ends with the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club.
The biggest mover in the FedEx Cup standings was Jason Dufner, whose victory at the PGA Championship rocketed him 48 places up the standings to 14th.
The winner of this week’s event in Greensboro, N.C., will earn 500 points, a valuable prize because the field for each tournament in the FedEx Cup playoffs is reduced each week. The top 125 players are invited to The Barclays, which starts the playoffs. The top 100 in the standings after that tournament advance to the Deutsche Bank Championship. The top 70 move on to the BMW Championship and the top 30 to East Lake.
The progressive cut line is offset by the points total quintupling in the playoffs.
Former Georgia Tech standout and Duluth resident Stewart Cink is one of the players who will attempt to win the Wyndham and improve his FedEx Cup standing. Cink remains at No. 76 after missing the cut at the PGA Championship. A victory at the Wyndham would move Cink to No. 21. He said he hasn’t played in the event since it moved to Sedgefield Country Club.
He decided to play because he took some time off in the summer that he doesn’t normally take and wants to get into a groove with his game in time for the playoffs. He said he felt rusty last week at the PGA Championship.
“Tournament golf is the only way to get ready for tournament golf,” he said. “It showed up for me big time last week on Thursday (he shot 75).”
Cink, who will be at East Lake on Monday promoting an event for a credit-card company that includes a short clinic and playing a few holes with card members, said he’s happy that he made the playoffs after missing them last year, but he still has bigger goals.
“I know that’s part of the game, but I have high standards,” he said. “I feel like I could have done more. Year’s not over, and there’s a lot of big tournaments coming up. That’s the way I’m positioning myself. I almost have nothing to lose.”
Other golfers with local ties who are scheduled to compete this week are Augusta’s Charles Howell III, who is No. 26 in the FedEx Cup standings; former Georgia standout Chris Kirk (No. 31); a pair of former Tech standouts in Roberto Castro (No. 38) and Cameron Tringale (No. 63); former Augusta State star Patrick Reed (No. 78); Acworth’s Jason Bohn (No. 98); ex-Yellow Jacket Bryce Molder (No. 101); and ex-Bulldog Erik Compton (No. 113).
Former Tech golfer Matt Kuchar, who ranks second with 2,293 points, 766 behind Tiger Woods, isn’t scheduled to compete. Neither are a trio of former UGA standouts, Harris English (No. 17), Russell Henley (No. 22) and Bubba Watson (No. 35).
