Matt McCarty had an early tee time on Sunday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
That wasn’t the plan going in.
“I kind of controlled my own destiny. Now for that not to be the case kind of sucks. But it is what it is, and we’ll see,” he said post-round.
McCarty entered the week at No. 48, just inside the PGA Tour’s all-important top 50 bubble. The top 50 get into next week’s BMW Championship, but more importantly they get into all of next season’s Signature events, and maybe even more importantly than that, doing so will provide an inside track to qualifying for the new ‘Championship Series’ cutoff coming in 2028.
McCarty didn’t much help his cause with a T63 finish, which earned him just 7.75 FedEx Cup points. That meant he had to sit around and wait to see if he hung on as others from outside the top 50 tried to play their way in.
“I’m going to hop on a plane and not look at my phone for a while,” McCarty said. “I think that’s better than kind of looking at it a lot.”
LAST MAN IN
McCarty’s fellow bubble boy Maverick McNealy didn’t mince words:
“I think the top 50 number is probably the most important number on the PGA Tour right now,” he said. “First of all, you want to play against the best players in the world. Those are the guys you grew up watching on TV. You want to play at the highest level, and that’s what these Signature Events are. I want to play against guys like Scottie and Rory and all those guys.
“Secondly, being able to pick your schedule is so important. It’s something that basically 50 guys get to do is know what they’re playing in starting January 1st. That just makes your life so much better and so much more predictable.”
Alex Noren, who entered at No. 46 and moved up 12 spots with a T3 finish, echoed its importance.
“It means a lot. I mean, I know the whole system is changing for 2028, so I wanted to get into the top 50 this year.”
McNealy entered the week in the precarious No. 49 spot; he navigated TPC Southwind’s increasingly treacherous back nine in two under on Sunday to finish T19 and remain No. 49 at week’s end.
McCarty could only watch as his projection pinged back and forth from green to red — but he, too, made it through, slipping from No. 48 to No. 50, less than eight points clear of No. 51.
Sungjae Im was the lone player from outside the top 50 to work his way in; despite stumbling with a Sunday four-over 74 he finished T5 to leap from No. 53 to No. 40.
FIRST 3 OUT
Inevitably if one golfer plays his way in that means he’s knocked another player out, and on Sunday Sungjae Im’s rise came at the expense of his friend Keith Mitchell, who finished No. 51.
Mitchell’s season concluded with a wild 18th hole where he hit his approach barefoot, standing in the water, only to watch as that approach bounded into the water by the green. He got up and down for bogey and T34; that wasn’t quite enough.
“I mean, it’s tough because this year I was like one foot in, one foot out all year, in the majors, in the Signature Events,” Mitchell said post-round, explaining the bubble’s real-life consequences. “I didn’t have a schedule. Really didn’t have like, a life, off-weeks built in. Every week I was like, first alternate, or am I going to get in?
“That’s good because you’re playing well, but if you’re in at the start of the season, it’s a different life, literally, as a PGA Tour player. It felt like that out there today … I felt like I handled the nerves of an entire season on your hands pretty well today. It looks like I’m going to come up short, but I did my best.”
Matt McCarty, currently 50th on the points list, just sent me this – “ Having my season rely on a spieth round is absolute chaos.”
Jordan Spieth began the week at No. 54 and mounted a charge on his front nine Sunday, birdieing his first hole and going out in two-under 33 — temporarily projecting inside the top 50. But three back-nine bogeys proved to be his undoing as he signed for a typically chaotic even-par 70, a T19 week and a 52nd-place season.
“It’s funny, I just feel like I’m kind of getting back to playing really good golf, like it’s close to kicking off, and I’m not going to play a tournament for a long time,” Spieth said post-round, ever the optimist. “I’m very, very confident in what’s coming. I just ran out of steam and maybe made a couple bad decisions over about a six-week stretch on what I was working on, and I just didn’t quite have enough time to make up for it.”
Max Homa finished at No. 53; his Sunday 68 was enough to move him to T24 for the week, but he would have needed two shots better to crack the top 50.
A final look at the bubble:
48. Eric Cole, 874.8 FedEx Cup points 49. Maverick McNealy, 862.8 50. Matt McCarty, 845.4 — 51. Keith Mitchell, 837.6 52. Jordan Spieth, 818.4 53. Max Homa, 811.4
