Watching this week’s Wyndham Championship is a stark reminder that professional golf isn’t all private jets and pay cheques.
Case in point: Four Canadians in the field of the final event of the PGA Tour’s 2017-18 regular season were, essentially, fighting for a full-time job.
Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C., Corey Conners of Listowel, Ont., David Hearn of Brantford, Ont., and Ben Silverman of Toronto were all outside the top-125 on the season-long FedEx Cup race entering the week.
It’s the magic number. If you finish inside it, you earn full status on the PGA Tour for the following year and have the opportunity to pick-and-choose a schedule.
If you don’t, you’re in limbo, somewhat, but solid play takes care of everything.
And Taylor’s play Sunday was the most solid of the quartet. He shot the round of his season, a 7-under-par 63, and moved up 10 spots to 119th on the FedEx Cup and will now have the opportunity to play the first FedEx Cup playoff event next week.
Hearn was tied for second going into the final round, but stalled Sunday. He shot an even-par 70 to finish 138th, after finishing 128th last year and playing out of a special category for golfers 126-150th on that list.
Conners, who played in the final group on Sunday twice in a row earlier this year but fell down the leaderboard both times (he was 167th in final-round scoring average, so it was an unfortunate trend), finished tied for 45th and ended up 130th.
Mackenzie Hughes was in the field at the Wyndham Championship this week as well and finished tied for 66th.
It was a struggle for the native of Dundas, Ont. this year – he missed 17 of 28 cuts – but most of the on-course performance was due to the big change off the course. He and his wife Jenna became first-time parents in the fall, and he’s admitted it was an adjustment. Although he finished outside the top-125 mark, he’s exempt for next year thanks to his win in 2016 at The RSM Classic.
Silverman missed the cut and ended up 136th on the FedEx Cup.
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Hearn played 21 tournaments this year on the PGA Tour, so it’s not like he, Silverman, and Conners will be sitting on their couch more often than not next year.
Silverman, Conners, and Hearn will go to the Web.com Tour finals starting next week, a four-tournament series. Golfers who finish in the top-25 on that Web.com Tour finals money list also earn solid PGA Tour status – so an opportunity remains.
Ryan Yip of Calgary, Alta., and Roger Sloan of Meritt, B.C., who finished in the top-75 on the Web.com Tour money list in 2018, will join the trio as well – as the fields for the Web.com Tour finals events are made up of 75 golfers from the PGA Tour and 75 golfers from the Web.com Tour.
Adam Svensson, who won the second event of the year on golf’s triple-A circuit, will also play the Web.com Tour finals, but since he finished in the top-25 on that Tour’s regular season money list, he’s already earned a PGA Tour card for next season.
So what does this all mean in the grand scheme of Canadian golf?
While Brooke Henderson remains a top-10 golfer in the world on the LPGA Tour at just 20 years of age – just two wins short of the most professional victories by a Canadian golfer – Canadians on the PGA Tour had a blip on an otherwise successful recent run.
With Svensson joining the crew on Tour, there are now seven full-time Canadian PGA Tour members. Compare that to men’s tennis, where there are only three men on the ATP Rankings list, golf continues to out-pace most other individual sports in terms of Canadian success.
Taylor won in 2014, while Hughes won in 2016 and Adam Hadwin won in 2017. Hadwin played all four majors this year and took this week off since he’s 70th in the FedEx Cup and already exempt into the first two playoff events.
Hadwin spent most of the winter working on his iron play, which paid off (58th this year in Greens in Regulation versus 114th last year). But he let his putting practice fall to the side and finished 130th in strokes gained putting this year, versus 18th in the same category a year ago.
Putting was a common issue for Canadians on the PGA Tour this year. Hearn, Hughes, Taylor, and Conners finished 145th, 152nd, 189th, and 192nd, respectively, in that same statistical category.
Drive for show, putt for dough, as they say. And besides needing to have all aspects of one’s game clicking all the time, golfers need also to be strong mentally. Throw in a few lucky breaks, and you’re well on your way.
But Hadwin, Hughes, and Taylor have experienced the biggest thrill in the sport recently. And there are more opportunities to come, with more Canadians in with a chance to do it, too.
The first FedEx Cup playoff event, The Northern Trust, goes next week in New Jersey, and Hadwin and Taylor will be in the field. Conners, Hearn, Silverman, Yip, Svensson, and Sloan will be in the first Web.com Tour finals event in Ohio.
