A hurtful last hole bogey handed Shane Lowry a long, anxious afternoon wait, that turned into an overnight one, to find out if he made the cut at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina.
With weather delays meaning a number of players failed to complete their second rounds and have to come back on Saturday morning, Lowry still sits one shot outside the cut line.
Lowry added a two-under-par 68 to his opening one-over 71 for a 36-hole one-under tally, and at the time of ending his round near lunch he was also outside the then expected cut-off mark of two-under.
However, as the afternoon half of the draw took to the Sedgefield Country Club course the cut dropped to one-under, giving Lowry, then among around another 80 players a chance of making a pay cheque. Among those also on one-under was Luke Donald, the recently appointed replacement 2023 European Ryder Cup captain.
One of the big movers was American Ryan Moore who teed-up in the last ‘regular’ event of the 2021/22 season lying 183rd on the FedEx Cup standings and for all intents and purposes looking to forfeit his new season membership but a second round 66 had Moore projected to move to 68th on the FedEx Cup standings and propelled him into a clubhouse share of the lead at nine-under in the $7.3m event.
Moore is tied at the top with fellow American Brandon Wu and Korea’s Joohyung Kim, all on 9-under par with Kim securing the round of the day, a 6-under par 64 which included seven birdies and just the one bogey.
In contrast to Moore, Rickie Fowler was also at one-under and projected to drop from his 123rd ranking, and two places inside the 125th end-of-season cut-off mark, and to 127th for the 33-year-old who has not tasted victory since early 2019.
As well, former US Open winning Web Simpson, who Irish Golfer Magazine identified in a Wyndham preview piece,, finished his two rounds with a three-over tally, and was projected to drop from 117th on the FedEx standings to 127th.
Another who could miss out, and be ending his PGA Tour year, is England’s Matt Wallace who teed-up on Thursday lying 124th but in missing the cut with scores of 71 and 69 for a level par tally, he’s projected to drop out of the top 125 on the money list.
Lowry’s third round was capped, when for a second day running, he eagled the par-5 5th but for the second round he was playing it as his 15th. Starting from the 10th, Lowry had bogeyed the 12th but then found forward gears with birdies at the 13th and 15th holes. He got stuck in the slow lane for seven holes, the 16th to fourth holes, ahead of the delight in sending a 190-yard second shot to just under five-feet at the 15th, holing the putt for an eagle ‘3’.
It put Lowry at three-under for his round and very much assured of playing all four rounds for a 13th occasion in 16 PGA Tour starts this year, but his second shot into the ninth was long and some 22-feet from the flag from where he took three shots to get up-and-down for a damaging bogey ‘5’.
It was then around 4pm local US time that Tour officials adjusted the cut-off mark to two-under and Lowry, who was sharing 68th at the time, was outside the projected cut mark.
Lowry had moved from 28th to 27th on the FedEx Cup standings when the Tour removed all LIV Golf players from the standings earlier in the week but now after missing the cut, he’ll head to next week’s FedEx St. Jude, the opening event of the Play-Off Series at a projected 30th place.
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