Tiger Woods at Greenbrier this week

Edited by Anand Datla

July 01, 2015: There is plenty at stake for Tiger Woods and a host of other golfers in the next few weeks. Only the top 125 reach the $10mn Fedex Playoffs and at 202 on the 2015 list, Woods has tons of work to do to avoid missing the event for a second year running. Tiger will tee it up at this week’s The Greenbrier Classic in the 202nd position in the FedExCup standings, which means he has a lot of work to do in not a lot of time. His current schedule includes just three more starts after this week — The Open Championship, his Quicken Loans National and the PGA Championship.

Woods at the moment isn’t eligible for the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, and if he keeps his current trend going won’t be eligible for the Playoffs for a second straight year, either.

Last season, injuries limited his play in what amounted to a lost season. This year, only Woods’ game has looked lost. It was only six years ago that Woods entered the Playoffs as the top seed and won his second FedExCup. But right now we’re finding out just how long six years is in dog years, or Tiger years.

Even if Woods, who has just 58 points in six appearances this year, were to win the rest of his starts, he would still trail Spieth by more than 900 points if Spieth accumulated zero points during that span (the WGC-Bridgestone is a no-cut, guaranteed FedExCup points event, so Spieth would get points even if he finished last).

Woods isn’t the only notable player outside the magical top 125, however. Graeme McDowell (152), Martin Kaymer (162), Ernie Els (172), Angel Cabrera (160) and Ryo Ishikawa (133) are all on the wrong side of the number at the moment.

The first three names on that list have never missed the Playoffs. The last two have combined to miss just three times — Cabrera in 2012 and 2011, Ishikawa in 2013.

A year ago, McDowell had eight top 10s; Kaymer won THE PLAYERS Championship and U.S. Open and Els tallied eight top-25 finishes. That means nothing now. As the season turns for the final quarter pole, that trio has just two top 10s between them (McDowell and Kaymer have one apiece).

But all of it could change in the span of a week. It did for Geoff Ogilvy last year.

The Australian had missed the cut at The Barclays, the first of the four Playoffs events, and thought his season was over. His bags were packed.

Except he ended up making it to the next event on the number and that week finished second at TPC Boston, which all but locked him up for the season-ending TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola, which in turn landed him a whole bunch of perks for this season, including spots at Kapalua, the Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship and the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship.

“I guess that’s the beauty of these things,” Ogilvy told me at the time. “I think they’ve got the balance pretty right, of rewarding the guys good years and giving everyone in the field a chance to have a little bit of glory or fun in the Playoffs.”

The regular season isn’t as volatile as the Playoffs, but playing really well in one week still goes a long way.

It’s one of the reasons Els decided to add last week’s Travelers Championship, a tournament he hadn’t played in more than a decade, to his schedule, even though it was opposite the BMW International Open, a tournament on the European Tour schedule that Els would normally play.

“I need some points from the FedEx deal,” he said. “So it made sense to play a tournament on the U.S. tour than the European Tour because I need more points here.”

Ogilvy could use some points himself and another late-season charge. He’s 132nd in the standings going into this week.

He’ll have to wait at least a week, though, since he’s not in the field at TPC Old White. Woods is, and now would be a good time to at least make it to the weekend.

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Source: PGA TOUR