The Top Thirty

The chase for the top 30 continues. All the players are scrambling to get into the Tour Championship at the end of the year. They all want to be invited to the party, but we know that most will be on the outside looking in.

Even the PGATour.com is pumping up the action with a section on their website dedicated to the chase. Heck, they even have a corporate sponsor… the popular soft drink company with the red can. I wonder how much that cost. Anyway, they (PGATour.com) are focusing in on 25-45. Here is the list through last week’s tournament:

Place   Last Week    Name                  Events      Earnings
25         29        Brandt Jobe             25        $1,989,971
26         24        Stuart Appleby          23        $1,957,603
27         38        Geoff Ogilvy            25        $1,931,676
28         57        Lucas Glover            26        $1,920,829
29         25        Shigeki Maruyama        27        $1,882,981
30         30        Charles Howell III      27        $1,880,379
31         26        Jason Bohn              27        $1,877,809
32         28        Peter Lonard            26        $1,874,060
33         31        Joe Ogilvie             29        $1,808,523
34         32        Fred Couples            22        $1,804,179
35         33        Zach Johnson            28        $1,796,441
36         36        Vaughn Taylor           30        $1,772,302
37         34        K.J. Choi               23        $1,765,374
38         35        Jose Maria Olazabal     16        $1,764,227
39         37        John Daly               24        $1,759,921
40         39        Tim Herron              26        $1,743,519
41         40        Brad Faxon              23        $1,700,535
42         41        Tim Petrovic            30        $1,699,229
43         42        Chad Campbell           25        $1,689,032
44         45        Tom Lehman              19        $1,631,478
45         43        Ernie Els               11        $1,627,184

With two events left the question obviously is: Who will make the cut? Well, let’s look a bit closer at these guys and see if we can tell.

Currently IN
We’ve all heard of the six guys in places 25-30. Jobe has had a solid year and Appleby had a quick start to the year winning the Mercedes but has slowly slid down the money list to where he is in danger of dropping out. Stuart has finished in the top 20 in 4 of his last 7 tournaments so he has helped himself a bit coming into these last two tournaments.

Geoff Ogilvy has been one of the steadiest golfers on tour this year. He has one win and has made 17 consecutive cuts which is the 2nd longest streak right now. Ogilvy is a guy that will have to be caught because I don’t think he will come back to the rest of the field. Of the six in the 25-30 range, I feel safest betting on him. Plus he finished tied for 20th last year in the Chrysler.

The last three guys are probably in the most danger. I know Glover just won the Funai Classic last week and is one of the up and coming players on tour, but he’s barely made more cuts than he has missed. Lucas has been streaky though. He went through a stretch of five tournaments starting with the Honda and finishing with the Zurich Classic that he made nearly $750,000. If this is the beginning of one of those hot streaks, Glover will be safe, but it will be interesting how he does in this week’s Chrysler Championship.

Maruyama is another guy that has helped himself recently. His worst finish in the last three tournaments is a tie for 11th at the WGC AmEx Championship. In those tournaments, he’s earned nearly $800,000…almost half of his total earnings for the year. He didn’t play last week, which is a bit of a surprise given how hot he had been, but Shigeki had played 7 straight weeks prior to that. He knows his body best, so I’m sure he thought a week off will serve him best.

Last in the crew is Charles Howell III, one of the enigmas on tour. He started off really fast on tour and has had six top tens… but at the same time he’s missed a third of the cuts. He has made the cut at the Chrysler Championship the last three years, but hasn’t finished high. It’s another example of good/bad type of stat for Charles. So it isn’t a surprise that I’m indifferent about whether or not he’s going to stay in the top 30. If you had to hold me to it, I would say no.

Currently OUT
OK. So let’s say that Glover and Howell don’t make it. What two players have the best shot of getting in? We can throw out Olazabal and Couples. They aren’t even playing this week and aren’t concerned with getting in… at least that’s what it seems. Els, well, we all know his water recreation skills have him out. Another guy who isn’t showing up in the field for this week’s tournament is Brad Faxon. I’m surprised and a bit disappointed. I was hoping one of the vets on tour would be in the thick of it.

Who will it be? My picks… and I’ll take two of them, are Jason Bohn and K.J. Choi. Let’s start with Bohn. Now I’m not going to put him near the category of Tiger, Phil and other stars, but over the past three months he has been one of the best players on tour. In the last 11 tournaments Bohn has had a first, second, third and only missed two cuts. He’s accumulated about 85% of his earnings during this stretch. Bohn is the horse I would bet on. Probably the only negative is that he did miss last week’s cut, but this year’s victory for Bohn came after two missed cuts.

On to our favorite Korean player, K.J. Choi. Maybe it is his cool orange shafts or something else, but I like watching him compete. He is a bulldog. Of the players in question and on the cutline, Choi is one of the few (if not the only one) that made the cut in every major this year. His stats are not the most impressive, but he does everything well. The amazing thing is that his ranking in scoring (25th) is better than any ranking in all other statistical categories… even the obscure ones like fairway proximity. This tells me that K.J. knows how to get the ball in the hole despite not being the best putter, driver of the ball, etc. I’ll take Choi if nobody else wants him.

So what about the others? Lonard? No. He may have won a tourney this year but Peter has been inconsistent with only a few top 10’s. Johnson? Possibly, but I don’t get the same feeling about him that I do about Choi or Bohn. All the others are the same. Who knows which John Daly will show up… Tim Herron has had a good season and doesn’t miss many cuts, but I just haven’t heard Lumpy’s name enough during the season. Nothing against any of these guys, but K.J. and Bohn look the most appealing right now.

The Race is On…
In a couple weeks we’ll find out if I’m right or not. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone came out of left field and won a tournament to vault themselves well into the top 30. Look at what Glover did last week going from 57 to 28. With all the different scenarios that could possibly play out, I doubt anyone could guess… but that’s the fun part. Let me know who you think will be in the top 30. Post a comment and sound off.