With just conditional status to rely upon having finished 2025 outside the top 100 in the FedEx Fall rankings, finishing out 2026 inside that all-important 100 mark was Séamus Power’s primary goal for the year.
That’s still the case, but a big week at the Wyndham Championship – the last of the regular season PGA Tour events – could still see him secure a place in the FedEx Cup playoffs and two good weeks could see him able to skip the entirety of the Fall Series with Signature Event status under his belt.
The Task? Finish no lower than solo second and it’ll almost certainly be enough to lift him into the top 70.
Coming in off a missed cut at the Rocket Classic in Detroit is far from ideal, but finishes of T10 and T11 in his two previous starts hint that the challenge is not beyond him. Course form, on the other hand, only serves to heighten the difficulty.
Though he hasn’t missed the cut in any of his last five starts at Sedgefield Country Club in North Carolina, a T27 finish in 2020 and a T28 in 2024 are his two best results, with a T44 and two T60 placings.
The good news, however, is that Sedgefield Country Club tends to place putting on a higher pedestal than most golf courses thanks to the Donald Ross-designed greens. And not since his 2022-23 season where he won the Butterfield Bermuda Championship and rose to a career-high 28th in the world, has the Waterford man had as much success with the flatstick as he has in 2026.
He currently ranks 18th on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting, and is 11th of those teeing it up this week. Another positive is that the putting surfaces are Bermuda grass, which is the strain that he’s tended to putt best on.
He’ll need to continue to roll the ball like has for most of the season – and scramble too – but a big improvement is needed in his driving and approach play in which he ranks 128th and 123rd respectively.
At 7,100 yards, it’s a relatively short course by PGA Tour standards, but with greens as heavily contoured as they are, finding the fairway takes on a higher premium and though he doesn’t seem to possess the same sort of raw power that he did before a back injury that effectively ended his chances of making the 2023 Ryder Cup team, he’s well above PGA Tour average in finding the short grass off the tee.
So, on paper at least, there is plenty cause for optimism, but it’s not just Power who’s in ‘Last Chance Saloon’ territory regarding the playoffs. Shane Lowry is the only player ranked between 60th – and he’s at number 60 – and 112th who is not in the field, and they’ll all be playing like their lives depend on it and should any of those – or even down as far as 181st-ranked Webb Simpson – win this week, they’ll be heading to Memphis for next week’s FedEx St Jude Championship along with all the big guns.
Additionally, Cameron Young is back to defend his title, and the third-ranked player in the FedEx Cup could put himself in the driving seat to win PGA Tour Player of the Year should he succesfully defend having already won two Signature Events in The Players Championship and The Cadillac Championship.
Throw in another 20 players ranked inside the top 50 in the FedEx Cup, and you get the picture of the enormity of the challenge.
But he’s in with a fighting chance. Now, he has to make the most of it.
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