[ad_1]
The underlying buzz during the final round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide was fixated on the automatic qualifiers for the U.S. Open, but that wasn’t the only narrative on Sunday.
Beginning with the winner, Jon Rahm was going to qualify for his fourth PGA Championship, but he wasn’t officially in the field at TPC Harding Park yet. Because he prevailed at Muirfield Village Golf Club, he checks off that box of administrative paperwork sooner than later.
On June 25, when the USGA modified the qualifying criteria for the U.S. Open (which will be the second tournament of the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season), it released a series of events that would help fill the field. (This is not unlike the annual Open Qualifying Series for The Open Championship, which was canceled this year). The first event was the Memorial from which the top two, not otherwise exempt, inside the top 10 would gain entry.
With his runner-up finish, Ryan Palmer secured his eighth appearance in the major and first since 2017. All three of the golfers rounding out the top five already are exempt, so the other tee time at Winged Foot Golf Club in September would go to either of the pair at T6 – Mackenzie Hughes or Henrik Norlander.
Because Hughes’ Official World Golf Ranking (97th) entering the Memorial was better than Norlander’s (189th), the Canadian gets the exemption. It’ll be his third start in the U.S. Open. He’s a career 0-for-4 in the majors.
Earlier in the week, the USGA filled five slots using Orders of Merit from the most completed seasons of four global tours. Ryo Ishikawa (third on the 2019 Japan Golf Tour), Jung-gon Hwang (fifth, JGTO), Ryan Fox (first, 2019 Australasian Tour), Scott Hend (second, 2019 Asian Tour) and JC Ritchie (first, 2019-20 Sunshine Tour) all qualified as the highest finishers not otherwise exempt from their respective circuits. Only Ritchie will be making his U.S. Open debut.
Once the results of the Memorial were tabulated for the OWGR, the top 50 qualified for the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. Viktor Hovland (31st), Palmer (40th), Jason Day (44th) and Kevin Streelman (45th) have joined the field at TPC Southwind as those not previously eligible. Hovland will be making his first appearance in a WGC and Streelman will be ending a WGC drought that dates back to the 2014 WGC-HSBC Champions.
Day redeemed himself.
See, the top 50 of the OWGR on March 16 qualified for the WGC-St. Jude. That was the last edition before the hiatus. Day slipped from 50th to 51st (by 0.0203 points) in that update and he had remained outside the top 50 until his T4 at the Memorial on Sunday. Now, because he was 58th at the beginning of the week and all but guaranteed of climbing into the field of 78 via the current OWGR, the Aussie probably wasn’t sweating a return trip to Memphis, but every touring professional would rather take care of business over doing the math.
More exemptions into the U.S. Open and WGC-St. Jude are up for grabs this week, but the PGA Championship will grow the most as the annual special money list will conclude with the 3M Open. As always, scroll past the alphabetical list for REMAINING QUALIFYING CRITERIA for all relevant tournaments in 2020.
NOTE: Golfers are omitted if they recently haven’t competed in majors for which they are eligible (e.g. PGA Championship=David Toms).
SJI = WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational
PGA = PGA Championship
US1 = U.S. Open (First edition of the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season)
MAS1 = Masters (First edition of the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season)
Recent Additions
SJI — Jason Day; Viktor Hovland; Ryan Palmer; Kevin Streelman
PGA — Jon Rahm
US1 — Ryan Fox; Scott Hend; Mackenzie Hughes; Jung-gon Hwang; Ryo Ishikawa; Ryan Palmer; JC Ritchie
MAS1 — none
[ad_2]
Source: PGA tour
